


Though You Would Never Want to See Me Bleed

by Regina_Writes



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, F/F, F/M, Hockey, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Injury Recovery, Light Choking, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Magic, Miscommunication, Multi, Oral Sex, POV Alternating, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Praise Kink, Rough Oral Sex, Serious Injuries, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 04:45:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 44,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16947252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regina_Writes/pseuds/Regina_Writes
Summary: Kent Parson has abysmal luck. He has terrible, no good, despicable, awful goddamn luck.But it hadn’t always been that way. In fact, his luck had been pretty good before his foray into practical magic with his best friend, Jack Zimmerman.The ass.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a reference to Drop the Guillotine by Peach Pit

The thing about spells is that they are always worded ambiguously.

To seventeen year old Kent, with a best friend with a magic book, and something that felt immeasurably important to prove, this wasn’t much of a concern.

They weren’t witches, or warlocks, or anything of the sort. They were just dumbass teenagers who didn’t even really believe it would _work._

But it had worked. The only problem was they weren’t exactly clear on what it did.

\---- 

They had been flipping through the book when Kent saw it. His hand had stilled it’s flipping, and he had felt like his heart stopped, just for a moment.

In messy, nearly illegible scrawl over a simple component list, and Latin neither of them had understood was a description:

_“Helps you find your true love.”_

Jack had peered over his shoulder and then laughed in that deep, rich voice of his.

“You’re such a hopeless romantic Kenny.”

He was. He still is. But the thing is: he didn’t do it to find love, not really. He did it to prove what he was feeling was _real_ . That he wasn’t just in love with Jack, that Jack was his _true love._

They did the spell, which required some plant components that they managed to find with relative ease, a fuckton of candles, a symbol that was helpfully drawn on the page, and something dear to him. It hadn’t been too hard to convince his cat to take a nap in the center of the circle, and luckily he didn’t need to harm her in any way. They likely terribly botched the Latin chanting part, but it had _worked._

The spell had ended rather anticlimactically for the average viewer, but Kent felt something, and he knew it worked.

If he had to describe it, he would say it was like this bone deep certainty, this steadfastness that prompted him to turn to Jack— who was in the middle of joking over the fact that nothing had happened—and grip his arm.

His brain lit up like a firecracker.

“You.” He said. “Jack, it’s you.”

Then he had kissed him. A hard dry press of lips together that he was sobbing into before he could even really register his emotions. Because it was Jack, it was always Jack. And now that he had proof, he was sure it would turn out alright.

Kent pulled back from the kiss and opened watery eyes to find Jack staring at him in alarm. But he didn’t look disgusted, he didn’t object. He just lifted a hand up and brushed a tear from  Kent’s cheek. He nuzzled into the hand and smiled a wobbly smile up at Jack.

“Why’re you crying Kenny?” He murmured softly.

Kent had laughed, pushing more tears out to roll over Jack’s thumb, and smiled brightly up at him.

“I’m just happy Zimms. Besides, this spell... you’d probably cry too if you could feel how overwhelming this is.”

Jack smiled. “I’m sure I would Kenny.”

The words were teasingly sarcastic, and Kent laughed again, batting Jack’s hand away from his cheek.

“Shut the fuck up Zimms.”

He kissed him before he could protest, and they didn’t say anything else for quite some time.

\----

In a stroke of good judgement that could be expected of neither of them on a regular basis, Jack resolved to take Latin that semester. They chose to be more selective in the spells they cast now that they knew the casting worked.

Meanwhile, Kent fostered the assumption that the certainty was the extent of the spell, and things went swimmingly with Jack. Other aspects of his life, however, were a little less rosy. It seemed like every time he left something up to chance it inevitably went wrong.

Strangely enough, the thing that drew this particular recurring nightmare to his attention was the academic aspect of his life. (Which he has never really concerned himself over.) When he took tests he always marked the questions he guessed on so he can go back and study the topic better for the final.

Every single one was wrong. Every time. What would normally Be a 25% chance for a correct answer seemed to reduce itself to zero in short order.

He was disappointed by the first test and frustrated by the second, but by the third he could see a pattern forming. He had to study harder to get the same scores now. This wasn’t too much of a problem in itself, seeing as he never really had to study very hard to get good scores in the first place.

But Kent was a chronic procrastinator on anything other than hockey.

It quickly became clear that this would become it’s own problem, as suddenly he couldn’t go with any less than the recommended eight hours of sleep a night. He had always been able to do the little dance with the alarm clock. His internal clock always saved him if he pressed snooze and went back to bed.

But he soon found he no longer woke at the last minute; now he woke far, far past it. His absences and tardies culminated in a stern talking to from the principal and his mother resolving to help him wake up in the morning, which helped sometimes, but he found himself racking up detentions from the not uncommon occasions when it didn’t.

He’s an athlete, so he’s had good reflexes for as long as he could remember, and he could typically rely on his peripheral vision to help him react to a lot of things. Losing this particular ability is what really caused the alarm to set in.

It happened like this: Jack threw him something, expecting a catch, as always. (They moved together like one, like breathing, so why wouldn’t he catch it? He always did.)

Instead, it smacked against his chest and fell to the ground.

Jack had laughed and joked about Kent “losing his edge”, but Kent had just stared. He always caught the things Jack threw to him. Every time. This, on top of his sudden zero percent success rate at guessing, and his newfound inability to wake up, is what tipped him off that something was _very_ wrong.

He half convinced himself it was nothing, but a month and three consecutive failed catches later, he finally asked how Jack’s reading comprehension was in Latin.

“I’m actually doing pretty well in the class,” Jack smiled, “Mrs.Skleros says I’m a natural. Why? Do you want to do a spell again?”

Kent was about to answer that no, he just wanted to check and make sure he hadn’t accidentally cursed himself, when Jack cut him off and started talking about a spell he wanted to try that would help the garden Kent’s mother was planting stay alive.

And, well, his mom did seem very enthusiastic about her rhododendrons, even though they kept wilting.

Really he just couldn’t say no to Jack.

He resolved to ask Jack to interpret the Latin they had read for his spell after they saved his mother’s garden.

They gathered a clipping from each plant in the garden, and drew the new symbol from this page, setting his mother’s spade in the middle. Then Jack convinced Kent to read the spell.

“It’s your mom’s garden Kenny, you should be the one to read it.”

He really never could say no to Jack.

So Jack settled on the bed, and Kent kneeled on the floor, reading aloud in shaky Latin until Jack started to laugh so hard Kent couldn’t keep going

“What?” Kent asked, somewhat annoyed. This whole thing had been Jack’s goddamn idea in the first place, and really, how fucking rude could you get?

“Sorry, sorry.” Jack stuttered out. “I just don’t get how you’re somehow managing to mispronounce _every word_ in the spell. You didn’t get a single one right.”

Jack made grabby hands for the book, and Kent handed it over, muttering all the while.

“Seems like my inability to get anything right has been a recurring theme lately.”

Jack eyes sharpened and he clapped Kent on the shoulder.

“Hey it’s okay, I shouldn’t have made you do it in the first place, you’ve never taken Latin before. It would be weird if you automatically understood it all  on the first try. Besides,” Jack smiled, “you get a lot of things right.”

He pulled him into a kiss then, and for a moment, all his worries felt very far away.

——

That, of course, didn’t last long.

When Kent finally got around to asking Jack to see what the spell actually said— Mumbling some excuse about being curious about the wording so Jack wouldn’t think he was a goddamn nutcase— Jack obliged.

He read to himself. At first with fondness in his eyes, then mild concern, gaze flickering between the page and Kent.

“What?” Kent asked. “What does it say?”

Jack closed the book and fixed him with an unreadable expression.

“Kenny… did you ask me because you were genuinely curious or because something is happening?”

 _Shit_ . He thought, somewhere far off, more like an echo than a conscious thought. _I really did curse myself, didn’t I._

“Why?” He stuttered. “What does it say?”

Jack scrutinized him at the evasion, but folds after a moment, concern flooding his expression.

“Well, it was more complicated than we thought.” Jack sighed. “I want to take it in to my Latin teacher to be sure, but it basically says that you “fall from the favor of chance” until you find your love.”

It all suddenly made sense. Everything he left to luck, or fate, or chance or _whatever._ It all automatically turned to garbage.

Kent was falling into himself, trying to process the fact that maybe Jack wasn’t it. That he was wrong. Even though he felt more right than he had ever felt in his life, maybe he wasn’t.

Jack released a weak nervous laugh, seeming to sense Kent’s mood.

“This doesn’t sound very good Kenny.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Kent muttered darkly.

Jack seemed shocked, then upset all at once. He got up off the bed and whirled around to face Kent.

“Were you lying to me?” He asked, his voice more calm than his disposition, icy and somewhat betrayed.

“What are you talking about?”

“When you said it was me Kent. Were you lying?”

Somehow the use of his actual name hurt more than the distrust of his honesty. Jack hadn’t called him anything other than Kenny since they had gotten together. Since before that even. It was like a slap to the face.

“No!” Kent said, more harshly than he intended. “How could you even ask that Jack?”

Jack, for his part, flinched at the use of his name.

“I don’t know,” he chuckled mirthlessly, “maybe it has to do with the fact that you’re obviously being impacted negatively by the spell. In a way that should only happen if you _haven’t found your true love yet._ ”

Jack inhaled shakily, running a hand through his hair.

“If you’re manipulating me, I would prefer to know now, so I don’t have to waste my time waiting for you to abandon me for your actual true love, or whatever.”

“I’m not.” Kent insisted, “I really-“ he faltered- “I really thought it was you.”

He hates himself, a little, for how that last part came out. So unbearably small and vulnerable that Jack seems to melt out of defensive posture in short order, slumping onto the bed by Kent.

“I thought it was you too.” Jack sighed. “I really did. But Kent.” Jack grabbed his shoulder gently, until he looked at him.

Kent knew what was coming next.

“I can’t do this. I can’t sit around until you find whoever really is the one. I can’t let myself fall deeper in love with you if I know it’s going to end in heartbreak.”

And shit, there go the waterworks. Kent hadn’t been ready for this he _hadn’t._

Jack cupped his chin and waited for Kent to open his eyes again before continuing.

Kent felt like his heart was about to break when he did because— oh— he had never seen that look on Jack’s face before. He looked devastated. He looked absolutely wrecked in the worst kind of way, and it was Kent’s fault. He had never wanted it to be his fault. Never wanted to see anything remotely like that on Jack’s face ever again. He would make sure it never happened if it killed him.

“It’s not fair to you either Kent. Whatever is happening to you will keep happening unless you find them. I can’t let you get complacent because you have me. I can’t be the reason you doubt yourself, or put it off. We’re bad for each other Kenny. I love you so much, but we’re already hurting each other and we just now found out-“

His voice broke and suddenly they were both crying. Silently shaking with sadness until, what felt like years later, but not nearly long enough, Jack stood up, wiped the tears from his cheek, kissed Kent one last time, and left.

—-

He doesn’t talk to Jack much after that. They come to the unspoken agreement that everything is hard enough as it is without acknowledging each other’s presence. But it still hurts, quashing that instinctive pull to call out to Jack when he sees him. Trying to convince himself that, no actually, he doesn’t love Jack more than anything else on the entire fucking planet. Pretending that they’re over each other, that they had a clean break.

His luck doesn’t improve.

Normally on the weekends he would stay home with Jack, watching the shittiest movies possible and lobbing popcorn into each other’s mouths when they weren’t making jokes about the terrible acting.

For weeks after the breakup, Kent holed himself up in his living room and watched shitty romantic dramas over popcorn salted primarily by his own tears.

It was a little pathetic.

On his third rewatch of the notebook in as many weeks he found himself having a mild out of body experience. There was part of him crying on the couch and part kind of looking at himself going: _this is ridiculous._

He swore off romantic dramas that night and started saying yes when people invited him to things. He says yes to pretty much everything, actually. Soon people started catching wind of the fact that Kent Parson would agree to virtually anything that sounded fun.

As a successful athlete, Kent had always been popular. So he got invited to quite a few parties.

His new schedule was Monday through Thursday: hockey practice and school, Friday: hockey practice, school, party, Saturday: hockey practice, party, Sunday: hockey practice, deal with hangover, study.

He met new people, and he fucked new people. A rotating cast of beautiful faces and bodies. After a while Kent kind of became the resident slut. It was mostly girls.He figured he’d wait until he was already drafted before coming out, but a few threesomes scratched the itch for masculinity, and when he went to college parties there was anonymity he could rely on.

He got by, enjoyed himself, even. But it was never as good as it had been with Jack. Maybe it was the fact that he was head over heels for the guy, maybe he wasn’t over him yet and it was messing him up. Maybe it was both.

He found himself slipping out of the moment sometimes. Caught himself mid _Jack would never_ or _if Jack were here..._

He had to force himself not to use Jack as a metric by which to measure all his interactions. Because he always found they came up short.

Jack was supposed to be his end game. The one. Maybe it was melodramatic, they did only date for a few months. But they had been friends since the fifth grade. He knew Jack like the back of his hand. Some part of him had been in love for years. They used to be so in sync that being together, working as a team, was like breathing. Natural, necessary.

So yeah, maybe Kent was being a little dramatic. But that boy had been a fixture in his life for seven years, and he had to quit him hold turkey. There was a huge fucking hole in the center of his chest that he could never really fill, but he was determined to keep stuffing whatever was nearest in until something stuck.

\----

When the draft came, everything went to shit.

Kent figured he’d seen all the sights in Quebec. Or rather, he’d gotten out often enough to say with relative certainty that no one in the immediate area was his soulmate.

So he got drafted by the Aces. And when Jack Zimmermann had a breakdown and got sent to a rehab center that just so happened to know not to let him in by name? He dropped the flowers off at the front desk and didn’t look back.

It was the healthy option. Little by little he was learning to live without Jack Zimmermann.

Cutting Jack out of his life was like the emotional equivalent of when he had taken a piece of string, tied one end around his doorknob and the other around a tooth that wasn’t even wiggling, and slammed the door. The tooth had come out all right, but it had hurt like hell, and he’d bled all over his favorite shirt.

In Vegas his luck only seemed to get worse, ironically enough. He had to pay more and more attention to the world around him so that he was leaving as little as possible to chance. But that was kind of hard to do when he was busy pining over the lost love of his life twenty four seven.

He bought a huge house a month after moving to Vegas. Which was kind of a mistake, because it just drew attention to the fact that he was completely alone.

His inability to make catches he was unprepared for continued, but his bad luck stretched far beyond getting hit in the face with random objects.

He was driving home from practice dead tired one night, and just so happened to close his eyes and rub his temples at the same time as a rabbit decided to run across the road. He got out to check on it, but the best he could do was watch it die, because it was just that kind of day.

Another day he left the stove on, and of course his house burned down. Along with most of what he owned. He lost the shirt he had stolen from Zimms to the fire, and somehow that loss was the one that had him crying at inopportune times for a week and a half.

He bought a new house, but he never used the stove again. He also probably developed a mild form of OCD, because he always had to check and make sure appliances were turned off at least three times before feeling comfortable. His new house was much smaller, which served the purpose of making him feel a little less alone and also made it much easier to do a full sweep of the house and make sure everything was turned off before leaving.

He was still lonely, so he adopted a cat some six months into his move. Her name was Butter, and she actually made him feel a lot less depressed. Which is probably why the universe, or chance, or whoever the fuck, let him have her for a year and a half. So he’d get attached enough to her to be fucking devastated when he left the window open and she disappeared.

His teammates helped him hang posters when they got wind of what happened, but Kent knew the entire time he’d never see her again. He’d left too much up to luck, and now she was gone. Kinda like fucking Zimms.

He didn’t really trust himself with a cat after that. He took people home to help keep his bed warm instead.

He kind of got sloppy about making sure his partners would keep quiet though, and before he knew it one of them had decided to post nude pictures of him on the internet. They were candid shots, which just made the whole ordeal a thousand times more slimy, but his sexual escapades had started to blur together enough that he truly didn’t have a clue who did it.

At least people seemed to like the pictures.

He got approached by a lot more people after that, but he was a lot more careful in who he chose to take home. Which meant his bed usually just housed him for the night.

Despite all this, by the beginning of his third year in Vegas he was really, truly convinced that he might finally be starting to get over Jack. Which, of course, is why someone had to bring him up.

\----

One of his teammates approached him, waving what seemed to be the sports section of the paper in his face.

“Hey Parse, didn’t you play in Juniors with this guy?”

Just like that, all his hard work at forgetting Jack Zimmermann went right down the drain. Suddenly there’s an article in his face about how Jack will be attending Samwell in the fall, and how he might take up hockey again. He hasn’t seen Jack in three years, had managed to avoid pictures of him even, but now? Now Jack was back, front and center, wearing a knowing smile and reminding Kent that he would never love anyone else the same way.

“Yeah.” He says, after a pause that is far too long to be considered normal. “I did.”

\----

He’s more distracted after that.

He thinks about how in sync they were, on the ice and off, and he wonders if Jack misses him as much as he misses Jack. It had been so nice to have a sure thing. To know that he could pass the puck and Jack would always, always be there for him. He wonders if Jack will ever find a partner who could match that, or if the ice will feel empty to him too.

He’s thinking about it when he crosses the street to the rink, when he steps off the curb and forgets to look both ways. He’s thinking about it so much that he doesn’t even notice the truck until it barrels into him, and the last thing he thinks before he loses consciousness is _I wonder if Jack will come to the funeral._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're in the present now, and we're here to stay. We're also kind of approaching the parts I'm more willing to write in depth about, so there will be less exposition and more detail :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rating changed to explicit for a few, well, explicit lines involving Kent and some original characters.

Jack doesn’t come to the funeral. 

Namely because there isn’t one. Kent survives, but just barely. 

The first thing the doctor tells him when he regains consciousness is “You were lucky.”

Which he knows is categorically untrue. 

If he was lucky, he would have never been hit by that truck. If he were lucky, he wouldn’t have done that stupid fucking spell, and he would have asked Jack out on his own time like a normal goddamn teenager. If he was  _ lucky _ Jack would have bothered to show up to the hospital. 

Instead he gets a delivery of flowers he can’t even properly sign for because his arm is in a cast. 

But according to the doctor, Kent is lucky to be alive, even luckier to have no major injuries, nothing he can’t recover from.

The EMT had to do compressions for two minutes. For two minutes, Kent had technically been dead. But they managed to resuscitate him, then bring him to the hospital so the doctors could slap everything back in place. Now he has scars from the surgery, three separate casts, and not nearly enough morphine. 

He’s lucky to be alive, but secretly he wonders if it’s really worth it, without Jack.

\----

Ok. So he’s being a depressed son of a bitch. He loves Jack, yes, and yes, it is significantly harder to move on when he knows that nobody he meets is really the one. When he knows that shitty stuff will keep happening until he finds “his love” or whatever. But he can deal. 

The plan is just to go out more. He hasn’t really done as much partying since high school, throwing himself into hockey instead. And while that’s very good for his career, it doesn’t help much in terms of meeting new people.

He also has tentative plans to make new friends. His teammates are nice, they helped him look for his cat, they’ve always remembered his birthday so far, and they’re sending a rotating cast of team members to visit him in the hospital every day. But maybe it’s time to meet someone that doesn’t play hockey. 

So two months later, when his limbs have healed and he’s gotten the doctor’s seal of approval to start playing hockey again, he slips out after an away game in New York to go clubbing.

He’s dancing like his life depends on it, doing his best to live in the moment after a near death experience. There’s sweat beading on his forehead, and his hips hurt from the gyrating he’s doing, but he feels more alive than he’s felt in years, depressingly enough.

He closes his eyes and tosses his head to the beat, just feeling the music and moving wherever it takes him. 

So he doesn’t sense an approach, but he feels an arm curl around his waist; sliding under the t-shirt, making him shiver and gasp just a little. When he opens his eyes it’s to see a smirking woman with black hair and blue eyes. Her cheekbones are sharp and high up, her jaw square. She bears a striking resemblance to Jack. In fact, if he didn’t know he’s already met all of Jack’s family he’d have sworn she was a long lost cousin of his. 

She’s tall as hell, towering about half a foot over him in heels. He belatedly remembers to smile back at her and her own smile grows in turn. 

Then she worms her hand into his back pocket, and his knees go a little weak. 

Her name is Anne. She works as a photographer and sometimes as a model, and is apparently pretty successful. They chat for a while at the bar before she takes him back to her apartment, with a breathtaking view over the New York City skyline. 

When she puts her hand on his shoulder and leans on him to take her heels off, she still comes out three inches taller than him. Almost the same height as Jack. He squeezes his eyes shut tight and feels pathetic for drawing these comparisons even three years later. But if he’s being entirely honest, she really is similar to Jack in a lot of ways.

She kisses him while he’s busy having his pity party, moves his hand to wrap around her waist, and snaps him back to reality. Jack isn’t there, Jack would never be his again. But she’s there, and her lips are sliding against his, her hands are traveling up to his shoulders, pushing him down to his knees, and. Alright, this is familiar territory.

\---

Anne is brilliant. Smart, charming, funny, gorgeous, and she looks a hell of a lot like Zimms. Or at least a thin, female Zimms. When he slips out of her bed in the morning and tugs on his jeans she turns over, smiles, and writes her number for him on a legal pad she pulls out of the bedside drawer. 

“Call me if you want,” she says through a yawn, “but just know I’m poly.”

At Kent’s confused look she just waves her hand dismissively and promises to explain over the phone before promptly falling back asleep.

Kent calls her when he lands back in Vegas and she lives up to her promise.

They don’t exactly do long distance, but they talk on the phone about once a week for almost a year, and he’s there for her when she needs to vent about some of her projects, or her friend’s misadventures. He gets to hear all about her new boyfriend, Malek, and when she tells him that he’s going to be on a business trip on her birthday, he resolves to comes out to visit for a while, seeing as it’s at the tail end of the off season and he has some free time.

He surprises her at her apartment two days before her birthday, hugging her and promising to take her out for a nice birthday dinner. 

He cooks her breakfast in bed on the day in question, triple checking the stove is off when he hears the doorbell ring and plods off to answer it.

The man at the door has a bouquet and a wrapped present, and introduces himself as Malek, back early from his week long business trip. Kent shakes his hand and lets him in to set the present down. 

Malek is handsome, with dark hair and dark skin and dark eyes and a million watt smile that makes Kent feel like melting. He’s also charming, and makes great conversation while Kent finishes making breakfast, now with a third plate. When Anne wakes up to eat her breakfast, and finds Malek, she’s happy. They make a great couple, but neither makes him feel like a third wheel, pleasantly enough. 

So when he takes Anne to dinner and she waits for Malek to use the bathroom before sliding her foot half up his pant leg; whispering that Malek is bisexual and she  _ knows  _ just how Kent has been looking at him, Kent figures-- why the hell not? 

He makes sure that Anne trusts Malek to keep his sexuality secret, and he and Malek both spend the night getting bossed around by the most devious birthday girl in existence. And if he calls her by the wrong name while her boyfriend is thoroughly screwing him into the mattress, well, it’s more reasonable to assume it’s Malek he’s accidentally calling Jack, isn’t it?

Malek isn’t offended, surprisingly enough. He just laughs at Kent’s newly tense shoulders and whispers something in his ear about sparking his competitive side, flipping Kent over so he can stroke his cock while he fucks him. Anne, for her part, just gives that same smug smirk she’d given him the first time they met and crawls across the bed to straddle his face.

Malek is amazing, and Anne is a force to be reckoned with. Together, they can best almost anyone. 

Except Jack. Because apparently his inexperienced fumbles with the man he loves more than anything can never be forgotten or topped by any amount of technique or sheer gorgeousness. Fucking fantastic. 

\-----

He says his goodbyes to Anne after her birthday weekend and flies back home on monday. He can’t shirk practice forever, and they do have a game coming up in California in a few weeks.

It’s preseason, so it’s technically a scrimmage, but he doesn’t want to miss it. He’s recently been appointed captain of the Aces, and this will be his first game as such. 

The truth is he wouldn’t miss it even if that wasn’t the case. 

He makes sure to keep the team on a pretty intensive practice schedule so he doesn’t embarrass himself by being a shit captain. It’s a little more intense than they’re used to, but he makes sure not to run them too ragged, and the grumbling mostly stays at a minimum.

The weeks zoom by, and before he knows it the team is flying out to California for the game. It’s in L.A. so traffic is abysmal, but they make it in time to crash into their hotel beds and rest up. 

He’s jittery in the morning, hopped up on nerves. Frosty seems to notice, and catches him on his way out of the locker room, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. He doesn’t even say anything, but it grounds him for some reason. He goes onto the ice calm and focused, and they win 2-4. 

In the locker room he thanks the guys for their hard work, and congratulates them on a good game before sending them off to enjoy Los Angeles. Their flight doesn’t leave until the next morning, and it’s still midday, so after his shower he heads to his hotel, changes, and walks to the beach. Which isn't too hard, seeing as their hotel is less than a block away. 

He feels better than he had in years. His luck is still shit, yeah, but he’s adapting. Becoming more alert. Learning the ways it affects him and how to avoid the effects. There has even been a distinct lack of major catastrophes in the past few months, which he thoroughly congratulates himself on. 

He even made a friend, or a girlfriend, or whatever Anne is to him. He’s hopped up on life, and the win, and he wants to try something new. To do something fun. 

He stops by a surfboard rental shack, renting a wetsuit as well for good measure.

When the sun meets the horizon an hour later, and the wave overtakes his board, he can’t help but chastise himself for growing complacent. He struggles to kick his way to the surface, but is disoriented by the tumble through the surf, unintentionally flipping through the water and over himself until his board cracks against his head and he falls into peaceful unconsciousness.

\----

He wakes up to a throbbing in his head, hospital lights that are far too bright, and a very concerned looking goalie nearly nose to nose with him.

His first instinct is to make some quip about personal space, but he quickly finds his lungs would much rather be coughing themselves out of his throat than supporting any witty remarks.

The goalie-- Frosty-- sighs in relief at his newfound consciousness. 

“Jesus, Parse,” he laughs halfheartedly, “You really gotta quit it with the near death experiences, you’re gonna give Margaret a heart attack.”

Which is a cruel statement to make to a man in recovery. Margaret is the team’s manager, a sweet older lady that is absolutely adored by everyone who meets her. She knits the team gloves to go under their equipment for god’s sake. No one wants to disappoint her, let alone  _ kill  _ her. 

“Fu- fuck you Frosty.” He manages to wheeze out between coughs.

Frosty just slaps him on the back and tells him he’s glad he’s feeling better.

\----

He has a broken nose from being hit in the face by a surfboard, a broken rib from the CPR, and pneumonia from inhaling seawater. But he is, once again, lucky to be alive. He’s starting to suspect that the spell will do anything short of killing him just to light a fire under his ass so he can go out and find his true love. Can’t do that if he’s dead.

He’s also starting to suspect that the spell was created at a time where there weren’t seven billion  _ goddamn people  _ on the planet.

A billion of which are in China, halfway across the world. God he hopes the love of his life is at least somewhere marginally nearby.

He wishes it could be Anne or Malek, or that it had actually been Jack when he thought it was. But apparently this spell that he thought would make his life easier is actually designed to make it incredibly complicated.

He should have just confessed to Jack without the help of a stupid spell. But he was a stupid, insecure teenager, and there is really nothing he could do about it now except try his best to move on.

——

It’s kind of hard to move on with the spell, though. Whatever had deluded him to believe that the spell was telling him Jack was his true love hasn’t made itself known again. 

No certainty, no magical knowing.

His teammates keep up the rotating cast of visitors, and he calls Anne to let her know he’s alive as soon as he feels okay to hold a conversation through the pneumonia.

It’s still croaky, he coughs after every other word, and by the time he gets through the third “I’m  _ fine  _ Anne” she’s already bought a plane ticket to California.

When he wakes up the next day, he sees her through the loopy haze of half awareness, hovering over his bedside.

“Oh good, you’re awake.I can’t believe you managed to get almost killed twice in two years.” She sighs and flops down onto the chair by his bed, laughing ruefully. “Maybe you should get a tattoo scoreboard. Death: zero, Kent Parson: two.”

She laughs at her own joke, and curls her hand up in his. Through the bleary fog of pain medication and half consciousness her chirping sounds just like Jack. She still looks like him, and she’s acting like him, and when he finally croaks out a response it’s just “Jack.”

It’s always been Jack.

——

When he wakes up again, he’s more alert, and Anne is still there; miraculously enough.

She has this bemused smile on her face, a little exasperated, a little loving. 

This time she actually studies him to make sure he’s fully awake before starting in.

“Kent,” she says, through a smile, “you are phenomenal in bed, you make awesome breakfast, and you are wonderful at doing what I tell you. But you are a shit boyfriend.”

Then she breaks down laughing.

“I know I have a square jaw, but this is a little much. You’ve called me by a guys name twice now.” She shakes her head bemusedly. “At least I assume the first one was also directed at me now. Whoever this guy is, you’ve got it bad. Also” she holds her hand out “I demand pictures. I need to know why it’s apparently so difficult to tell us apart.”

Kent reels for a moment, blinking and processing her statements.

“Oh. That wasn’t a dream?” He coughs loudly, and Anne pats his shoulder awkwardly until it passes. “Also. I don’t”— a small cough there— “keep pictures of him.” He breathes in deeply before concluding:  “Not good for me.”

He had learned that lesson the hard way, though most of the photos he had of Jack had been taken on a flip phone, so it hadn’t been that hard to just decide not to transfer them to his smartphone.

“Ohh.” Anne says, leaning over the guardrails of the hospital bed. “Bad breakup? It seems like you didn’t get any closure.” 

She pours him a glass of water, then watches him drink it, waiting for his answer.

“Yeah,” Kent says forlornly. “He turned me into a wizard.”

Anne blinks for a moment, then snorts loudly, laughing into the palm of her hand.

“Oh my god Kent, what kind of painkillers do they have you on?”

“Shut up,” Kent coughs out, batting the hand she’s using to mockingly check his temperature away, “and can I just text you? I’m about to lose my voice.”

“Yeah yeah,” she says, waving her hand through the air dismissively, “go ahead.”

So Kent types out and sends her a text.

**He showed me his magic book, and I did a spell from it that kinda backfired.**

“Is that an innuendo for something?”

**Shut up**

She sighs, looking him over, studying his face for tells.

“Okay,” she concludes, “you seem pretty serious about this. So lay it on me. What’s the whole story?”

——

About an hour of texting later she’s looking at him consideringly.

“Well,” she says “I still think the whole spell thing is a bunch of bullshit. But you seem pretty sold on the whole “magic is real” angle, and so does your ex. So I guess that’s what’s important. Even if magic is bullshit.”

**Tell that to my shit luck. Or my mom’s miraculously alive hydrangeas. There’s no way those things would be standing without magic.**

“Okay, okay, your mother’s inability to garden aside,” she sighs, “you should talk to him.”

Kent opens his mouth to protest, but she just raises her hand in a quelling motion.

“Look Kent, you’ve only ever thought that this guy was the one. What if you were right? What if the spell was working, and that’s why your luck got even more shit when Jack left?”

**But my luck was already pretty shit while Jack was there**

She pauses in consideration.

"Kent… what if Jack was just a piece? Now I know I’m biased because I’m poly,” she smiles, “but it’s worth considering that there might be another. Or hell, maybe more. It could be that you found one of your true loves, but the spell won’t be satisfied until you find the rest.”

Kent considers this for a second, staring at her. Then she does a drop the mic motion and sits down, completely ruining the moment and making Kent laugh so hard he starts another coughing fit.

She just hands him another glass of water and smiles.

“It’s just food for thought Kent, I personally think this is probably coincidental, and maybe a little bit of placebo effect, but if helping you find “the one” will get you out of the little misery hole you’ve been wallowing in since I met you, well—“ she smiles “—then it’ll be well worth it.”

Kent smiles back, and wishes she were the one, because even though she isn’t he really does love her to bits. Loves how easy it is, almost like it was with Jack, like breathing. 

“Also consider this me officially breaking up with you,” she says cheerfully, effectively ruining the moment once more. “You’ve got this romantic quest for true love thing going on and that is just not my jam at all. Besides, when you eventually do find your true loves or whatever there probably won’t be enough room for me.” She laughs and covers his mouth with her hand before he can protest. “You have always been a huge slut Kent Parson, and I truly commend you for that. But you are also bad at multitasking, and I predict that this spell will pretty much max out your romantic threshold.”

She kisses the back of her own hand where it rests over Kent’s mouth, then leans back and laughs when Kent licks her palm in protest. His saliva gets wiped off on her probably way too expensive jeans and she smiles at him.

“We should definitely stay friends though. And while we’re doing that,” she whips out her phone, “what’s this guy’s full name? I have to google him.”

When he finally acquiesces and texts her Jack’s full name he watches her hands still over the keyboard.

“Okay that’s weird.” She says. “He does look a lot like me.”

She pulls out a compact and starts a side by side comparison. Kent can’t help but laugh at the befuddled expression on her face.

“Shut up.” She says, not looking up from the compact. “You would be fascinated if someone showed you a picture of your male counterpart too. Or female, whatever. I mean,” she turns the compact a little, shifting her phone like she’s trying to mirror the picture, “the nose is a little different, but otherwise we’re creepy similar.”

She shakes herself out of it and clicks her compact shut with an air of finality.

“Maybe we're really distant cousins or something,” she says, and then laughs when Kent makes a face.

“You’re the one that’s dating your ex’s doppelgänger, would it really be that much weirder if we were actually related?”

Kent nods his head vigorously and she laughs even louder.

“God stop making that face, I’m gonna burst a kidney.”

Kent sticks his tongue out at her, and she wipes tears from the corner of her eye, calming herself down.

“Kent, I really think you should see him.”

Kent’s smile fades, and he finds himself looking at the floor.

“I know it’s hard. I know he broke your heart. But, Kent, I’m willing to bet you broke his too. If this spell really is real, it was trying to tell you something.”

There’s a warm hand on her chin and she is suddenly gently coaxing his gaze up to meet hers.

“You should at least try and get closure. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re kind of pathetic.”

He rolls his eyes and bats her hand away. She glances at the clock and startles, gathering up her purse.

“Shit,” She says, “I have to go, but think about it Kent. I really think you should go see him.”

Then she’s off, and he’s left with his thoughts, and the knowledge that his painkillers are really starting to wear off.


	3. Chapter 3

Anne fucks back off to the other side of America pretty promptly after that. But she Skypes him through his recovery.

“The shitty miming you perpetually do instead of just typing what you have to say out really adds spice to our conversations.”

She just wants to see him suffer.

The pneumonia takes about two weeks to clear up, and Anne teases him relentlessly about his croaky voice the entire way through. Luckily his previous near death experience had been on the off season, and this new one literally happened directly after the first game of the preseason. He comes to an agreement with his doctor to spend another week recovering, effectively cutting the recommended recovery time for a broken rib in half. 

But the thing is, broken rib aside, and regardless of his shit luck, Kent Parson is still currently one of the best players in Hockey. It’s why he’s captain of the Aces, it’s part of the reason why he feels the need to rush back onto the ice. Because his teammates are amazing, but he’ll feel like shit if they lose a game because he can’t be there. Even if it’s technically just a scrimmage.

First game aside, he’s recovering all throughout preseason, and he fumes his way through sitting on the bench for the first two games of the season as well.

He takes full advantage of his regained lung capacity to yell at the ref from the bleachers though, and he’s still does his non-strenuous duty as captain and strategies from the bench. 

When he finally gets back on to the ice, he barely has any time to think about what Anne said, too busy playing hockey and practicing in his downtime. Going out after games in a habitual sweep of whatever city they’re currently inhabiting, checking for his soulmate.

The thing is, the more time passes, the more he thinks she might be right.

But regardless of whether or not she is, the fact of the matter remains that he is either missing his one, singular soulmate, or he is missing one (or more, god) of his plural soulmates. If it is plural, then it would be much easier to show up with the missing link in tow than to show up and ask for a second chance just because he had a revelation courtesy of one polyamorous pseudo-therapist. 

When he explains all this to Anne she just nods understandingly.

“Now, I say this in the most feminist way possible, but you could have summed all this up much more quickly by just admitting you’re a pussy.”

It kind of sucks that this is what passes for his voice of reason nowadays.

“You know Kent, with all the shit luck even I have to admit you have, it’s surprising you’re currently one of the best hockey players in the world.”

Kent snorts, mid pushup. She’d Skyped him in the middle of his off day workout and insisted he continue while she watched. But she did most of the talking anyways.

“Since when do you watch hockey?” He pants out, flopping to the floor.

“I don’t, really.” She admits unabashedly. “One of the models I work with-- Chad or something-- fanboyed all over my salad when I told him I was friends with you. He started prattling off so many statistics I finally watched one of your games. I had no clue what was happening, but you seemed like you were doing pretty well. Which, once again, is surprising considering your shit luck.”

She gives him a meaningful look.

“Yeah, well,” Kent grabs his water bottle and takes a deep swig, officially done with his workout, “It’s not luck. No more than your photoshoots are. It’s skill, and an absolute ton of practice.”

He gestures to himself, peeling his sweat drenched tank top off his stomach and fanning it out before dropping it and letting it stick back to his skin.

“Even when I have downtime I usually spend it doing some kind of physical activity.”

Anne wiggles her eyebrows at him lasciviously. “Yeah I bet you do baby.”

“Shut up,” he laughs, “ you know what I mean.”

She smirks at him, uncapping a tube of lipstick and beginning to expertly apply it, presumably watching her image in the corner to check her work.

“You going somewhere?” Kent asks, feeling rude for just now noticing the slinky black dress spilling off her shoulders.

“Yes, actually. I’m leaving in about 5 minutes. They’re opening a new art gallery a few blocks from my apartment and I feel morally obligated to come eat the horderves and pay off a not insignificant chunk of some artistically inclined kid’s college debt.”

“How noble of you. I guess that means you’re leaving now?”

“It sure does Kenny, toodles!” 

He blinks at the now empty air. That’s a new one. For her at least. No ones called him Kenny since-- well, since Jack broke up with him. More than four and a half years ago. 

Suddenly, he’s angry with himself. Furious that it’s been so long and he still can’t get his shit together either way. Can’t forget Jack, can’t make the time to try to reconcile with him. Too scared to try to reconcile with him.

His gaze bounces to the door to his kitchen. He mostly just keeps alcohol and leftover takeout in there since he’s too attached to this house to attempt to use the stove. It would be very, very easy to just go into the pantry and drink until he can’t pronounce Jack Zimmermann’s name anymore. 

He sighs and nixes the idea. The only reason he’s managed to keep his near death experiences from climbing into the dozens is because he’s set some pretty strict rules for himself. Never drink more than one serving alone. Never start drinking alone at all if he knows he’ll be tempted to go beyond one glass. He needs to be constantly alert to make sure fate doesn’t screw him over, or with someone he trusts to protect him. Besides, he has a flight to the next game at four in the morning tomorrow, and he’ll be damned if he misses it. Two games is plenty, and almost dying is a good excuse for missing them. Drunken revelry is not a good excuse to miss a third.

The lack of noise quickly begins to grate on him, so he aimlessly flips the tv on, not really caring what’s playing, while he forces himself to pick something actually healthy off the takeout menu. It’s some hockey analysts talking about something or other, and he’s content to tune them out while he scans the menu.

That is, until they start talking about Jack. They don’t go too in depth, just a minute or two of “where are they now” style chatter. Talk about how he’s going into his spring semester of his Junior year of college. His successful prior semester as captain of the Samwell University Men’s Hockey team. Doubts that he’ll do quite so well if he decides to take up professional hockey in a year and a half. Kent vaguely registers that he’s crumpling the takeout menu in his iron grip.

He lets out a breath he wasn’t fully aware he was holding and turns the TV set back off, smoothing out the takeout menu again.

\-----

They make it to the Stanley Cup playoffs, which wasn’t that surprising. He’s happy they qualified of course, but that isn’t the hard part. Sixteen teams in the league qualify, and there’s 31 teams all together.

Besides, they’ve been qualifying pretty consistently, they even won the cup two years ago. But now that’s he’s captain, he really wants that cup.

He also  _ might _ be distracting himself from all things Jack related by throwing himself into all things hockey related.

He tries not to run his guys too ragged, he doesn’t want to fuck up in the first bracket because they’re too tired to play seven games. 

The stakes feel higher than they’ve ever been. Namely because now he’s the captain, and their loss— or win, will be attributed to him. It’s his first year as captain, and he’s going to do it  _ right. _

He manages to keep Jack off his mind through sheer willpower, instead focusing solely on hockey.

His teammates probably think he’s crazy by now. 

It’s pretty obvious considering some of the interactions he’s had with the other players on his team. For example: when one of the defencemen, Loony, had come to visit him in the hospital and met Anne.

“Parse! How you doing?” He pauses when he sees Anne, smile widening into a grin. “I see you finally got yourself a girlfriend. Glad to see you’re finally doing something other than hockey.”

He claps Kent on the shoulder, then seems to realize the double entendre. 

“Uh, sorry, I meant that in the most appropriate way possible miss--?”

“Anne, and I’m not really his girlfriend.”

Then Loony had actually looked disappointed, and Kent could tell the team had probably gotten personally invested in his ability to do things outside of hockey. They’ve been there for all the worst instances of his bad luck taking it’s toll on him. And no matter how much he compartmentalizes, he knows for a fact Frosty walked in on him ugly crying into a bowl of froyo in the unlit supply closet. 

It happened after his cat ran away, so he was pretty much justified.

The point is, his team is under the distinct impression that Kent has an unhealthy obsession with hockey, and an inability to live a life beyond the game, and he can’t really blame them. As far as they know, he hasn’t dated anyone since he joined the team (mostly true, he and Anne were never really official), he hasn’t gotten a new pet since Butter ran away, he sees his family once a year, and he barely has any friends. The thing is, they’re right. Hockey is kind of consuming his life. But it’s something he’s good at. So good that his bad luck can’t touch him on the ice. It’s a comfort to him, but as he is just now realizing, it’s also a crutch.

He uses hockey as an excuse to never bring anything meaningful into his life. Because the things that are meaningful are the things he’s afraid of losing. 

Which is not to say that hockey isn’t meaningful to him. That’s another reason why he spends so much time on it. Because if he allows himself to rely on luck instead of carefully cultivated skill, he runs the risk of losing the thing that he’s loved the longest, and somehow managed to keep.

Sometimes he thinks hockey might be one of his true loves, and that being around it so much is the one thing preserving the last bit of his luck that’s somehow keeping him alive, keeping him playing.

But that’s kind of ridiculous.

He keeps his head in the game, and does pretty well captaining the team through the first bracket of the Stanley Cup playoffs. They advance after six games, which means they get a little extra time to recuperate while some of the other matchups go the full seven. 

Or at least, he decides to give them time to recuperate instead of using it to practice more when he sees the exhaustion some of them are clearly exhibiting. 

After everyone trundles out of the locker room, escaping the post win huddle up as swiftly as their sore bodies will allow, Loony marches right up to him and claps him on the shoulder. Then he claps his other hand on his other shoulder, whirls him around, and steers him into the lounge to force him into a Skype call with his wife and kid.

It’s actually pretty nice. Though Loony’s wife is covered in baby vomit and obviously just as exhausted as his team, she congratulates them on the win with a genuine smile. When the laptop closes, Loony turns and smiles at him.

“You’re a great captain Parse, and you’ve always been a great teammate. I think I speak for all of us, though, when I say you  _ need  _ to get a life.”

Kent laughs, and Loony smiles along with him.

“Seriously man, sign up for e-harmony or something.” He chuckles. “Look, I know we’ve been failing a little as an emotional support system outside of visiting you in the hospital, and helping you hang up flyers. But we’ve always made a great team, and I think that means we can be great friends too.”

  
“Thanks man,” Kent says, genuinely touched, “but i’ll believe that when I hear it from Riles.”

Loony snorts. “You know that kid’s a lost cause when it comes to doing anything outside of hockey, listening to house music, and fucking puck bunnies. I’m sure there are plenty of guy’s on the team who want to be better friends with you, but that one is going to have to age a bit before he gets his act together.”

 

——

 

Things are going great. Loony is a great friend, albeit a, well, loony one. They advance from the next bracket after just five games, which is fucking phenomenal.  He isn’t thinking about Jack as much, unless Anne brings it up, which he convinced her to stop doing after explaining how important this years playoffs are to him.

They advance to the third bracket to play against the Falconers. A relatively new team from Providence. They’ve been making a pretty strong showing, but they aren’t really the strongest team in the league. They beat them four to two in the end, but they made a pretty good showing. 

Then it’s down to the last two teams in the playoffs— them, and the defending champions from last year. 

They lose the first game, and Kent, while throwing his helmet in defeat, accidentally manages to throw it into the locker room trash can and has to fish it out. Which is kind of disgusting.

They win the next game. Loony shoots the game winner, and Kent makes kissy faces at him during the celly that earns him a one way ticket to noogie town right there on the ice. His status and prestige as captain diminishes a little, but he’s so giddy he barely cares.

The game after that is also a win, and even the normally aloof Riles joins in the celly this time, helping Kent to hoist Troy, one of their older teammates and the one who scored this particular winning goal, above the ice. He takes it like a champ, fully accepting his wobbly and frankly dangerous perch in their arms.

The fourth game is another loss, and they lose a bit of the high they were riding from the last two games now that they’re tied two to two. Kent gives a little bit of a pep talk in the locker room, but he’s not sure it takes. 

The fifth game is another loss, and he starts to feel dread building in the pit of his stomach. He stamps it out as quickly as possible and gives a real pep talk this time. He’s new to the whole captain thing, so it’s not perfect, but it gets the job done much better than the last one.

When they skate out onto the ice for the seventh game, the opposing team looks pretty smug. They only need to win this game to win the cup. They clearly have the advantage, so Kent can’t say they wouldn’t be smug too if their roles were switched. But he knows his team’s got their heads on right now, so the most he can do is play the best game he can. Which is a pretty goddamn good game.

This time he scores the winning goal, and Loony skates over to him and picks him up mid victory dance, under the armpits like a wet cat. Then he spins him around and kisses him full on the lips before setting him down for another noogie. 

Kent’s lips tingle a little and he shakes his head, dislodging the sensation and quickly resolving to get laid after the seventh game before he starts having inappropriate fantasies about their resident crazy defenseman. 

They go into the locker room on a high note, but he can tell everyone is vibrating with nervous energy, so he figures, why the hell not, let’s try one more pep talk. 

It’s pretty short, but the guys seem to like it, and he falls face first onto the hotel bed that night feeling pretty good about the upcoming game. 

He is laser focused during the seventh game. The people in the stadium around him are loud, but it’s like white noise, fading out until it’s just him and the puck. He scores the first goal, and assists on the second, but the opposing team is matching them pretty consistently. Frosty is a great goalie, and Loony is an awesome defenceman, but the other team is just as good, just as deserving. The third goal they make has nothing to do with Kent, but he still gives Carly a pretty solid pat on the back for a celly. Unfortunately that goal is followed pretty closely by a third goal on the other side as well. 

It’s getting down to brass tacks and Kent does not want this fucking thing going into overtime. So he is on that puck like a hawk, the same intensity he always has cranked up to a hundred by the magnitude of what’s at stake for him. Before he knows it, he’s got the puck, he’s got seconds left on the clock, and he’s got a mildly acceptable shot. So he takes it, and the opposing goalie fumbles to catch the puck, and there’s a moment of limited vision where he’s unsure whether or not it made it in the net. But then there’s cheering, and the buzzer sounding, and the breath getting squeezed out of him by Riles, of all people, and he did it. They did it. They won the Stanley fucking Cup. 

 

\-----

 

The ensuing celly is legendary. He’s scored plenty of winning goals in his life, but this was the  _ winning  _ goal. The goal that won the Stanley Cup. He’s captain of the team that won the Stanley Cup. He’d say that’ll look good on his resume but he is never ever going to give up this beautiful goddamn team. So he doesn’t need one. 

Anne calls him to congratulate him on the win, and he’s so touched that she actually watched the game that he cries a little and furiously blames it on the endorphins. Which is a pretty reasonable thing to blame it on.

He takes what must be a million pictures, on the ice covered in confetti, with his team, with the fucking Stanley Cup. 

It turns out Carly actually owns property in the area, so they all head out to absolutely trash his place after the game.

Someone hands him a beer and he tosses it back in short order, heading out to find another one. None of the boys are likely to be sober enough to keep an eye on him but he figures, fuck it, if any day is the day to break his drinking rules, it’s today. 

The night pretty much starts to blur together after he finishes his third beer and accepts some kind of incredibly potent moonshine in its stead. It tastes like fucking rubbing alcohol, but he roots through Carly’s fridge and finds some apple juice to mix in, which doesn’t really help that much, but certainly doesn’t make it taste  _ worse.  _

Loony’s wife turns up a couple hours in. Turns out she left the baby with her parents for the night specifically so she wouldn’t have to miss the celly. It turns out the celly was definitely missing her. 

What was previously a rager gets kicked up a notch when she does a quick keg stand and promptly goes to kick the ass of anyone that dares to challenge her at beer pong. 

Some dude Kent doesn’t know walks by in a banana hammock and an open hawaiian shirt, and Kent is perplexed but also a little bit turned on. 

Riles manages to get his grubby paws on the sound system, and his music isn’t actually half bad when one is careening towards drunk and in the middle of a raging party.

Kent wanders off to replenish his drink and ends up doing a body shot off banana hammock, and then his female counterpart who is wearing a bikini and a hawaiian shirt. Turns out they wandered in from a nearby beach by “following the sounds of partying”, which doesn’t really explain much, but also kind of explains everything. 

He’s pretty hammered now, and banana hammock sends him off with well wishes and a dubiously acquired margarita. He would explore that threesome just waiting to happen further at any other party, but even shitfaced he knows better than to have a threesome in Carl’s house. Or at least one with two guys. 

He steps outside with his margarita just in time to watch Loony’s wife drive a golf cart into the pool. Which is probably dangerous and definitely not good for the pool, but also pretty fucking awesome. At least because he’s not personally in the splash zone, and gets to watch everyone that is get absolutely drenched. 

At that point Loony and his wife migrate to a nearby club, somehow sweeping him, half the party, and the Stanley Cup along in their wake. At least he’s pretty sure the Stanley Cup is with them, he hasn’t really seen it since the party started. 

Now that he has access to actually palatable alcohol, he imbibes way more than is really healthy. 

He’s at the bar downing a mixed drink called “sand in the crack” which is frankly delightful in so many ways, when Loony’s wife comes up and grabs him by the hand, barely giving him any time to set his drink down before dragging him out to the dance floor. They do the whole “respectful distance” thing for approximately one song before “grind on me” starts playing and she whirls him around and does just that.

Normally Kent is a slutty enough bottom that someone manhandling him like that would end with him taking them to bed. But this is obviously more of a humorous instance than anything. She’s laughing, and he’s the kind of drunk that means he also immediately starts laughing, and then he thinks about the fact that she is a very sweet looking, petite, 5 foot nothing woman who’s got a professional hockey player bent over half twerking into her lap and he loses it. 

He hears a gasp of mock outrage from his right, and he suddenly gets whirled out of her grip and replaced with Loony, which is even more hilarious, as Loony is a six foot three, hulking beast, who’s wife is making a truly commendable effort to pelvic thrust him into oblivion. 

The bar closes at two am, but they’re still riding a victory high. They migrate back to Carly’s house, and he finds them pretty quickly, chirping them for coming crawling back while also handing them mixed drinks. These ones are significantly better than the ones before, someone must have made a booze run while they were gone or something. 

It’s fucking delicious, so he downs it and heads to the kitchen for a second. His second quickly becomes his third, and he pushes his way into the writhing sea of people onto the makeshift dance floor. Loony’s wife is nowhere to be seen, but he still busts out some of his best moves. He dances until he’s drenched in sweat and nearly suffocating in the stuffy air. 

He slides off the floor after eight or so songs, in desperate need of fresh air, and to use the bathroom. He doesn’t feel like muscling his way through the crowded downstairs area to look for a bathroom though, so he heads up to begin his hunt instead.

It isn’t to hard, he finds a bathroom and relieves himself in short order. When he turns around, he sees the tub is full. From the smell he deduces someone filled it with some sort of alcohol. There’s also a ladle, so he shrugs and kneels down to try it.

It’s fucking horrible, but he drinks a few ladles full anyways. He’s still sweating bullets, it’s so hot, so he goes and opens the bathroom window, sticking his head out like a dog in a car. It’s a little bit better, but the air outside is still stagnant and warm. And that’s when he sees it. The pool. With the golf cart still sunk to the bottom like the weirdest shipwreck on the planet. 

The bathroom he is in isn’t the perfect distance for jumping into the pool from, but the balcony outside the next room over is.

So he grins, shuts the bathroom window, and swiftly makes his way into the next room, pushing his way past a scantily clad couple to clamber out onto the balcony. He climbs up onto the railing, thinks  _ this is the best idea I have ever had in my life,  _ and jumps. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some of the dialogue from this chapter is taken directly from the comic, so if it's familiar, that's why. New relationship tags, so I'm sure some of you are starting to guess what the endgame here is lol. Next week I'm posting two chapters because I'm doing an interlude for Anne/Lardo shenanigans and I'm sure some of you would rather just skip the OC chapter.

So it wasn’t actually a good idea to jump from a second floor balcony into a swimming pool with a golf cart in it.

He actually made it into the pool, surprisingly enough. But when he did, he apparently cracked his head on the golf cart. He says apparently because that’s the point at which he passed out.

He almost drowned again, which is frankly repetitive. But the fun new aspect was this time he also broke his neck.

The doctors make sure to tell him again how lucky he is to be alive and functioning and all that. But he is pissed. He aches all over, he had to have surgery again, his neck is fucking broken and the biggest celly of his life is now tainted by his third near death experience.

Loony assures him that the party was already winding down when it happened, but Kent reserves the right to be salty about it.

After his most recent debacle he’s left with a broken neck, a fractured jaw, a concussion, and a PR team that is struggling, but miraculously managing to keep the origins of this particular near death experience under wraps.

They can’t keep the fact that it happened from spreading, though. Which results in this neat little compromise where suddenly there are articles running speculating how he ended up in the hospital for his third near death experience in less than three years. Most come to the conclusion that Kent’s injury was party related— which is true, and the only logical assumption seeing as it was the day after they won the Stanley Cup.

At this point PR contacts him and lets him know they’re going to tell the reporters he fell in the pool at the party during the customary after-win presser. Which he will not be attending, seeing as his mouth is going to be wired shut for the next 10-14 days.

He gets flowers from Jack on the second day, which, unsurprisingly, makes him cry. They come with a purposefully bland get well soon card, and probably only came because it’s basically impossible not to notice that Kent is currently recovering from a near death experience, given the fact that at least ten separate news sources have covered it. But it’s proof that Jack still thinks about him, maybe even cares on some level. Which is both heartening and devastating in turn.

Despite the high level of publicity this particular debacle sustains, Anne has yet to contact him. He’s too chickenshit to reach out first, and his jaw is wired shut, so Skyping is mostly pointless anyways. This leaves him generally paranoid and nervous the longer she remains quiet.

That is, until she storms in to his room three days into his hospital stay, fuming and visibly jetlagged, and throws her purse onto the visitor chair. She crosses her arms in front of her chest and watches him cower for a few seconds before starting in.

“I heard you’re jaw was wired shut, so I came as soon as I can. I wanted to make sure I got here while you’re defenseless and unable to respond, so I can lecture your prone form.”

Kent squints and reaches for his phone to text a response, but she just raises her hand.

“Don’t bother, I’m not reading your texts until I’m ready for your responses.”

Damn she’s devious.

She sighs deeply and pulls the chair up to his bed. It scrapes horribly against the linoleum, but she doesn’t even wince, steadfast to the point of being a little bit scary.

“Kent. This is going to be an I told you so speech. Which will be annoying for you and cathartic for me, I’m sure. But it’s also going to be an I care about you speech, so try not to cry.”

Kent makes sure she’s looking before deliberately rolling his eyes.

She flicks his shoulder.

“I understand that the Stanley Cup was important to you. But you put your life at risk every day that you aren’t with your true love, or whatever. And, okay, I’m not fully committed to the whole “magic is real” thing, but the more you almost die, the more crazy I get, so it’s starting to get scary plausible.”

She runs her hand through her hair, shaking her head at him.

“I think, if you really are cursed, you need to focus on getting rid of it. Unless you are severely more masochistic than I could ever have accounted for, you probably don’t enjoy almost dying on a more than annual basis. And you have to have noticed that it’s escalating. You started off with a lost cat and ended with a broken neck. Your near death experiences are getting closer together, and it’s probably just going to continue to get worse. So you need to buck up and confront Jack like you’ve been promising you would for the past six months. Before the spell decides to cut it’s losses and just kill you.”

She pauses for breath, then pulls her purse up onto her lap and fishes out an energy drink, cracking it open and chugging for a prolonged period of time. She finishes without pause, crumples it, and shoots it perfectly into the recycle bin across the room. Kent would probably be gaping if he could move his jaw.

“Where was I?” She pauses for a second, then snaps her fingers in mock realization. “Oh right, you’re a dumbass. I know you lived the past five years being careful to the point where you were barely living, just to avoid the effects of the spell, and I know that didn’t put you in a healthy mindset. But you need to decide if you would rather avoid Jack for the rest of your life, or get to actually live your life, because you obviously can’t do both.”

She sighs again, covering Kent’s hand with her own.

“And it’s time for some hard truths, because apparently I’m your therapist. You have been lucky.”

Kent clenches his jaw at that and immediately regrets it.

“Just listen. You are an athlete, you have almost died three times now. To the point where you received CPR each time, and surgery twice. You might be becoming a bit numb to it, but I’m not. I know the reality. You. Have. Been. Lucky. Three times, and not one of them prevented you from playing hockey. You are not permanently injured in any way, you always recover in time to play. Hockey is pretty much your whole life Kent. And three days ago you came closer than ever to losing it. You broke your fucking neck! Do you know how easy it is for a broken neck to result in paralysis? As in everything below the neck! Zero chance of ever playing hockey again. Two of them happened during the off season, one only resulted in you missing two games and some scrimmages, and you still won the Stanley Cup! So pull the fuck up out of your nosedive pity party and smell the goddamn roses with me! You being alive to listen to me lecture you is pretty rosy to me. Being able to move your body as much as you want after the appropriate amount of bed rest? Rosy. Still having a lucrative career as a professional athlete? Absolutely. Fucking. Peachy.”

She’s panting, her voice had raised to a volume he’d never heard from her before. But she’s quiet now, just breathing in his stunned silence.

“I care about you Kent,” she says quietly, “you’re my best friend, but you’re also kind of an asshole for putting me through this. You didn’t even text me to let me know you were okay.”

She’s bent over, her hair a veil over her face, obscuring it from his vision. Her shoulders are shaking a little bit, but she’s not crying yet, just trying to get everything under control.

Her phone vibrates twice, and she pulls it out of her pocket to read the text on the screen.

I’m okay

Kent places his phone back on the bedside drawer and watches as the shaking in her shoulders turns into laughter. She tosses her head back, laughing a deep belly laugh, her face splotchy red, but dry.

When her laughing peters out into chuckles, she looks into his eyes and smiles.

“You should really think about getting that tattoo. You’re up to three on the scoreboard.”

Kent rolls his eyes so hard he feels like it makes his concussion worse, somehow.

——

So Anne is right. Anne is always, always right. He needs to buck up and talk to Jack. He’s not going to do it right away, he still has to recover. But in the meantime he needs to be careful.

He supposes the fact that he can’t do anything fun on pain of death should eventually push him to seek out Jack. If he almost dies a fourth time Anne will finish the job.

Anne is even right about the tattoo.

Well, not the scoreboard. That idea is kind of stupid. But he does want a tattoo. Something that acknowledges the spell’s effect on his life. The shit it put him through. The fact that he could have been dead three times over now.

So when the doctor finally removes the wiring holding his jaw in place, the first thing he says in twelve days is to his doctor.

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Depends on what the favor is.”

“It’s not hard. Can you just grab that pen on the bedside table and circle where you would do compressions during CPR?”

Then he reaches behind himself, untying the first string on his hospital gown and pulling down the collar.

The doctor shoots him a puzzled look, so he explains.

“It’s for a tattoo.”

So he shrugs, circles the area, and heads off to finish his rounds.

Kent is discharged pretty soon after that, though he has to keep wearing the neck brace for the next four weeks.

His first stop is the tattoo parlor, and he’ll admit, he is a bit of a spectacle with the neck brace still on. But that does mean he doesn’t really have to explain to him why he wants the words “begin compressions here” tattooed on his chest.

He seems to get the picture.

About two hours later he has a new tattoo. It hurts like a bitch, apparently rib cage tattoos always do, but Kent preemptively took some tylenol, so it’s probably not as bad as it could have been.

He has to keep it covered for a while, but as soon as the seran wrap covered paper towel comes off he skypes Anne to show her.

She pouts for a little bit about the fact that he hadn’t taken her scoreboard idea, but after a while she gives in and congratulates him on making his first big commitment in four years.

He opens his mouth to protest, but the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes she’s right. He hasn’t made a big commitment since he bought his house.

She broke his brain just a little, but she seems smug enough about it. In a different life Anne would have had a lucrative career as some sort of guidance counselor, or therapist, or just someone who verbally slaps someone with hard truths. She’s fucking ruthless.

He wraps the conversation up pretty quickly and does his nightly ablutions, making sure to follow the tattoo care guidelines very closely. Because if his next near death experience involves an infected tattoo he will throw a tantrum.

He lies awake in bed for hours that night, staring at the ceiling and thinking about what he’s going to say to Jack.

“Hi, I know you said you never want to talk to me again, but my ex-girlfriend convinced me we actually are soulmates, just the polyamorous kind.”

“I still love you even though we only dated for three months five years ago.”

“I keep almost dying and I need you to love me again so that will stop happening”

“Did you ever actually love me?”

“Why was it so easy for you to leave?”

Ok so his fantasies are starting to get way too accusational. He should probably dial it back a bit.

“Come play on the Aces with me, marry me, and have my babies.”

Or maybe he should just stop thinking about it and go to bed.

\----

The trend continues like that. He spend the daytime going about his daily routine, avoiding thoughts of Jack as much as possible. He’s learned through hard experience that thinking about Jack is way too distracting for someone like him. Someone that needs to be focused every moment on pain of bad luck punching him in the face.

Then at night, in the safety of his bed, far away from things that require his concentration, he thinks of Jack. Of what he’ll say to Jack when he finally confronts him. He watches videos of Jack playing hockey, something he hadn’t allowed himself to do because he knew it would hurt too much. And it does hurt. But he also knows he’ll get to see him soon. That he’ll talk to him, and explain things, and maybe, just maybe, if he does it right, they’ll be together again. Jack will join the Aces, and their schedules will be pretty much perfectly aligned, and they can spend the off season globetrotting, looking for their missing third, or fourth, or however many people it’ll take to break the spell.

So maybe he spends more time fantasizing about the outcome than actually considering the practical explanations he’ll provide.

Maybe he avoids strategizing by watching every video he can find of Jack playing since they broke up. Maybe he doesn’t really want to think about how exactly he’s going to approach Jack. Because he could easily fail. If he says something wrong, offends Jack, or confuses him and can’t explain, or if Jack just doesn't even want to talk to him. If Jack simply doesn’t care about him any more? Then he’ll be stuck with his curse forever.

It’s a paralyzing realization.

When the neck brace comes off Anne starts to bother him about contacting Jack every time they Skype. At first he tells her he’s waiting for school to start up for Jack again, so he can know for sure where Jack is. She mostly takes the excuse in stride, but she still makes him think about what he’s going to say on a daily basis.

When Samwell gets back in session for the fall semester, Anne starts riding him even harder on what he’s going to do. But the pre-season starts up around the same time, and Kent gets sucked up into the team, winning scrimmages and practicing, coordinating, strategizing, etc.

Anne calls his bullshit on day one, but allows it, because the brace did come off pretty recently, and he needs to focus on improving his game for the cup.

But it’s not too long before she starts to get fed up. He’s annoyed with himself too, growing more anxious the longer he puts it off, but he can’t seem to make himself stop making excuses.

Finally, after months of this, far longer than he thought she would put up with it, she makes an ultimatum.

“I’ve been instagram stalking the Samwell Men’s Hockey team’s hot artist manager, and apparently they’re having an end of the year kegster next week. I’m coming with or without you, so decide if you want me wandering unsupervised around Jack, or if you want to buckle up and supervise me”

It’s a lot easier to commit after that. He buys a plane ticket to Massachusetts, and rents an expensive ass car to drive to the Haus, which is apparently the name of the frat house Jack lives in during the school year.

His knuckles grip white on the steering wheel the entire drive there. The drive from the airport to the Haus isn’t that long, but he’s tense and jittery with nerves.

He can hear the bass from the party nearly half a block away, and it’s easy to find the Haus with the sea of drunken college students spilling from it’s porch onto the lawn.

There isn’t a lot of parking, but he manages to find a spot a block away. He walks to the Haus, fighting the urge to turn back every step of the way.

About halfway there, he feels the certainty that he had felt that day they did the spell, same as it was, creeping up on him. It’s like a shock to his system. He pauses on the sidewalk, stunned. He forgot how comforting it was, that certainty deep down inside, how emotional. Wiping his eyes, he tamps down the urge to cry and continues down the sidewalk.

On the porch, he pushes his way through the teeming mass and into the humid main hallway of the Haus. A peek into the living room shows Anne towering over a petite girl with a pixie cut. She has the same salacious smirk on her face that she had the first time he met her. Judging by the look on the petite girl’s face, whatever Anne is doing is working.

Kent shakes his head bemusedly and pushes his way into the crowded living room.

As he moves through the press of bodies, the steadfastness starts to intensify. He tenses, and stiffens up, waiting to catch sight of Jack, or for jack to catch sight of him. Too terrified to look for him, frozen in place.

Someone calls out his name from behind him, and he whirls around, expecting the confrontation he’s been dreaming of for the past five years to begin post haste. Then he finds himself readjusting his gaze on account of the fact that the person he’s facing is about six inches shorter than expected.

Needless to say it’s not Jack; it’s a very hot twink-- who he instinctively gives an approving once over. He notices, and responds with a sly smile and a once over of his own, introducing himself as Eric “But you can call me Bitty” Bittle.

Then his smile reverts to sweet and kind, and it becomes clear he’s not actually interested in doing anything with Kent beyond idle flirting. Which is just as well, seeing as Kent came here on a mission.

Though the certainty is still pretty strong, Jack doesn’t seem to have spotted him yet, and he’s not going to be rude and swivel his head around while he’s in the middle of a conversation. (Read: he’s still scared to actually confront Jack.)

“Do you want to come sit down? You seem to be pretty badly jet-lagged.”

And wow, that is a really smooth southern drawl. He hadn’t really noticed it over the thumping beat when he introduced himself, but the genuine concern in his voice seems to bring it out more strongly.

“Last I saw there weren’t really any free seats around.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I just gotta find where some of my boys are sitting and they’re pretty much guaranteed to part like the Red Sea for me. I do control their pie supply after all,” he confides with a devious twinkle in his eye.

It? Sounds like an innuendo, but something tells Kent it really isn’t. For some reason.

Kent follows Bitty to the couch in a daze, and, true to his word, the boys sitting there scramble up at the first sight of his doe eyes.

“Hey Bitty, do you want to sit down?” Asks the adorably enthusiastic guy with braces, pulling up a redhead with him, who boggles at the sight of Kent.

“Is that Kent fucking Parson?” Redhead asks.

“Yes.” Bitty replies cooly. “So behave yourselves.”

Kent laughs. “It’s cool, do you guys want pictures or something?”

Famous last words. He falls down a selfie rabbithole after that, with Bitty watching bemusedly from the couch, obviously used to the exuberant enthusiasm of the freshmen here. He laughs at Kent’s pain, which is honestly kind of hot.

After a couple minutes of gratuitous selfie taking, he plops down to the couch besides Bitty. He seems like a pretty cool guy, and even if he isn’t a viable sexual prospect Kent is interested in getting to know him, and possibly his number.

“Do you want me to get a picture of you and Kent?” The guy with braces, identified as Chowder asks.

“Yes, please, Chowder”

Kent places his arm around the back of the couch, and leans in close enough to feel Bitty’s body warmth, but they don’t touch, and when Chowder is done taking the picture he disingages.

“So what brings you here Mr.Parson?”

Kent laughs. “Just call me Kent, or Parse if you want.”

Bitty smiles. “Alright Parse, what brings you here?”

“My ex-girlfriend,” Kent says honestly, “she lured me here under the pretense of blackmail, but now I see she was just trying to cozy up to your manager.”

Kent nods in Anne’s direction, where she is now getting thoroughly schooled by the petite girl in flip cup. The game ends, and she burps in Anne’s face so obviously loudly Kent imagines he can hear it across the room and over the thrumming bass. Anne looks seconds away from sweeping her up into her arms and whisking her away to New York.

Bitty laughs. “You’re a strange one, Parson.”

Kent shrugs. “It’s the truth. So what position do you play?”

Bitty looks mildly taken aback, then honestly touched.

“Most people don’t realize i’m part of the team on account of,” he gestures to himself, “well, my general stature.” He laughs. “I blame my mom for these genes.”

“I can relate,” Kent sighs, “being in a career where most players are above six foot and absolutely hulking besides makes me feel constantly five. Everyone is taller than me here.”

“You’re preaching to the choir Parson, preaching to the choir.”

They smile at each other in commiseration, and the petite girl swoops into his peripherals.

“Yo Parson.” She says, arms crossed, shuttered aviators on. “I’ve never kicked a professional hockey player’s ass at flip cup before. Come attempt to keep it that way before ultimately losing.”

Kent glances over at Bitty, but he just smiles encouragingly. For a second, he almost convinces himself to give Bitty his number. But he’s not really sure how to go about it, and his challenger is tapping her foot impatiently in his peripheral, so, whatever. He’s way too socially awkward to devise a plan for giving Bitty his number off the cuff. He’ll just find him later and friend him on some form of social media like a normal fucking millennial.

He stands up from the couch and nods.

“Challenge accepted.”

“Cool,” she nods, “so, when I beat you, I’m going to need photographic evidence of the feat.”

\----

True to her word, Lardo absolutely decimates him in flip cup. As an athlete, he’s ashamed. But also very approving of Anne’s taste.

She hands him a pair of shuttered aviators for the photo, and a drawing pad and pencil to help document his shame. True to his word, he writes a sign to commemorate his defeat and takes a selfie with her.

As she’s choosing a filter to layer over the photo before posting to instagram, Anne speed walks her way through the crowd, plowing into Kent. She claps him on the shoulder.

“Dude. I met my doppleganger.” She sways slightly in place. “Too bad you have your whole destiny bullshit, because I would totally be the other slice of bread in that clone sandwich.”

Kent steadies her by the shoulders.

“You’re drunk.”

“Uh, no shit Sherlock, I just got creamed by a beautiful art student at a drinking game, and then I drank tub juice. On another obvious note, you should go talk to your soulmate, he’s in the hallway chatting up the hot twink you were talking to earlier.”

Kent winces. “Why’d you have to tell me where he is, now I’m pretty much obligated to actually speak to him. I can’t hide behind the ignorance anymore Anne. Also, you could have just not drank the suspiciously named beverage. The name implies bad decisions.”

“Fuck you Parson,” she says cheerily, “go cozy up to your other half.”

She points in the direction of the hallway, and Kent sighs and trundles off, heart pounding. He’d grown accustomed to the feeling the spell invoked in a desperate bid to avoid confronting Jack, but now that it’s on the forefront of his mind he can feel it clear as day, ramping up in intensity as he approaches the hallway.

At the threshold he can see Jack talking to Bitty. Jack is telling him some story about driving off some guys with a fire extinguisher, and Bitty is obviously hanging on to every word. And Kent can read between the lines, alright? These two clearly have something going on. Bitty practically has heart eyes, and Jack has this soft smile on his face that is clearly involuntary and- fuck. He’s too late. Jack is already in love with someone else. Maybe if he had gone when Anne first suggested it he would have had a chance.

Then Jack willingly suggests a selfie. With barely any prompting. And there’s a chirp tumbling out of his mouth before he can even think to contain it.

“I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t seeing it myself. Jack Zimmerman. At a party. Taking a selfie.”

He can already feel himself settling into the cocky veneer he uses to impress the press, or people he wants to sleep with. It’s easy, invulnerable, kind of dickish.

Bitty smiles at him and waves.

Jack just stares, for a moment. “...Kent”

Even after six years, it still stings. His voice is like a slap to the face, the use of his actual name even moreso.

“Hey, Zimms. Didja miss me?”

“Why are you here?”

Which, ouch. Kent has to flinch a little at that. Bitty looks about ready to smack Jack upside the head, so Kent pastes his cocky smirk back on and barrels through.

“I just wanted to talk, it’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, squinting, “It has. It’s a little loud down here, let’s talk in my room.”

“Sure thing,” Kent says, pushing forward, “lead the way. See you later Bitty.”

Bitty waves sort of dazedly after them, likely confused after that trainwreck of a conversation. Kent doesn’t really blame him, he’s just trying not to have a mental breakdown considering how much of a disaster this is already shaping up to be.

Jack leads him upstairs, and unlocks the door to his room, ushering Kent inside. He takes a moment to do a 360, checking out the room. It’s pretty much just as undecorated and tidy as the room he’d had when they were teenagers. It’s not really something he cares that much about, he just really, really doesn’t want to have this conversation.

“So, nice digs.” He says, unsure of how to talk about, well, anything.

“Kent…” Jack says warningly. “Why are you here? You said you wanted to talk, well,” he spreads his arms out, “i’m listening.”

He takes his cap off, running his hand through his hair.

“I don’t know where to start.” He says, chewing on his lip. “I thought this would be easier. Or, well, i’ve been avoiding this like the plague, so I can’t really say I thought this would be easy--” he sighs-- “I don’t know, I guess I just figured it’d be like when we were kids.”

Jack crosses his arms over his chest.

“That was a long time ago Kent.”

Again, ouch.

“I know that.” Kent says. “I--”

“Was it the spell?”

“What?” Kent asks.

“You getting hit by the car, drowning, breaking your neck, was it the spell?”

Kent’s gaze flickers away, to the floor.

“I… Yeah, I think so.”

“Then you shouldn’t be here,” Jack says, “you should be finding them. What if you die, Kent? What if the spell has a countdown, limits to how long you can search before it just cuts it’s losses and kills you. What if you get injured and can’t play anymore? You shouldn’t be wasting your time reminiscing with me, you should be focusing.”

“That’s why i’m here.” he says. “It really is you, Jack.”

He takes a step forward, and Jack backs himself into the doorframe. Kent freezes in place, then runs his hand through his hair again.

“Who are you signing with?”

“What?”

“Where are you going, when you get out of,” he gestures around himself, “this place.”

“I don’t know.”

“You have no clue?” Kent asks.

“I mean.. It could be Montreal, it could be L.A. okay? I don’t know.”

For a moment, Kent thinks, maybe he’ll come with him.

“What about Las Vegas?”

Jack just stares at him, processing all the shit Kent just dumped on him, and god, he knows it’s a lot, but he wishes Jack would stop looking at him like that. Like he’s a bomb that’s about to go off at any moment. One he can’t diffuse.

“I… I don’t know.”

The certainty is growing stronger, thrumming like an impulse beneath his skin. Urging him to grab Jack, to never, ever let go. He steps forward. Jack just looks like he wishes he could sink through the door. It hurts so badly, to see Jack is physically repelled by him.

“I could pull some strings, get you on the team.” He reaches out his hand, and he knows Jack doesn’t look comfortable with this at all, but everything in him is just screaming to touch Jack. He feels like a live wire, and if he could just complete the circuit.

He steps closer, crowding Jack up into the doorway and gives him a one sided hug, just to feel the fireworks again. The spell screaming “this is it, this is it, this is what you need.”

His shoulders shake, and Jack’s hand tentatively raises to pat him on the back.

“I wish you could feel this.” Kent murmurs into his chest. “This knowing.” He looks up, and Jack doesn’t look as uncomfortable anymore, just... Pitying, maybe a little uncertain.

“Join the Aces with me. I know i’m right. If you don’t i’ll probably just end up dead at this point, because that’s just my luc-”

Jack’s expression hardens, and he pushes Kent a healthy distance away.

“So that’s your game, eh? You came here to, to manipulate me into joining your team? To guilt me into watching you get proven wrong again. I believed you the first time, I believed you so much that--” his voice breaks-- “the stakes are so much higher now. I can’t be responsible for distracting you from what you really need to be doing.”

“But if you could just feel--”

“I do feel,” Jack says. “I feel like you’re giving up, and you’re scared because the consequences are getting worse, and you’re reverting back to square one. I feel like you’re just going to repeat the same mistakes as the first time, and i’m going to distract you, and it’s going to end in pain and suffering for the both of us. I feel like i’ve moved on, and I can’t do this again.”

Jack looks so tired, and Kent did a shitty job explaining, he really really did. He knows now that Jack is a piece of the puzzle, he felt it again, and he’s surer than ever. But he can’t do this to Jack. He saw him with Bitty. He is moving on, he’s happy now, without Kent. Or he was happy before Kent got here. Kent would lose his hockey career forever, almost die a thousand times over, die a million just to make sure he’d never, ever be the one to put this look on Jack’s face.

He never should have come here without the other person. Should have found them first, should have put better thought into this before seeking Jack out.

“I shouldn’t have come here.” Kent concludes aloud. “I’m sorry.”

Then he pushes his way past Jack and opens the door, stepping out. Bitty is on the floor. Which, shit he hopes he hadn’t heard enough of that conversation for Jack not to be able to play it off.

He readjusts his cap on his head.

“I’ll let you know when I find our missing piece.”

Then he begins a quick descent into the living room.

 


	5. Anne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POV switching time! This work is going to start regularly switching POV, the chapter titles will indicate who's POV it is. Next chapter goes up later today, just some minor tweaks to be made, so stay tuned!

Anne finds Lardo’s Instagram while searching her doppelganger. He doesn’t really have much of a social media presence-- or any at all, but his friends post pictures of him every now and again. One of said friends is the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team manager, Larissa Duan.

Anne develops a bit of a crush. So sue her. Lardo is cute, and artistic, and apparently undefeated at flip cup. Which shouldn’t be a selling point, but somehow it is when the person in question is consistently beating people who could easily bench press her.

Kent may be desperately trying to avoid his romantic prospects, but she is not. So when Lardo posts about Epikegster, she figures she’ll kill two birds with one stone, meeting the cute hockey manager and making Kent confront his true love at the same time.

So she buys a plane ticket to Massachusetts, and strong arms Kent into doing the same.

On the night of epikegster, she gets an uber to the Haus. Kent isn’t there yet, but the party is in full swing. She’s wearing heels, which she knows she’ll regret in the morning, but she’s going into a house full of behemoths, and she _will_ be the tallest one there. If only by an inch.

It doesn’t take long to find Lardo at the table, dominating at flip cup. She slips into the crowd behind her, watching as Lardo sets her empty cup down on the table and effortlessly flips it over. It lands perfectly, and she raises her arms in victory.

A bro on the side of the table opposite her throws down his cap in defeat, and he and his teammates start stripping.

“Impressive,” Anne says, watching the bros disrobe. “Penalty?”

Lardo turns around to face her. Her gaze slides down Anne’s body for a moment and she preens internally.

“One of them said some sexist shit so I challenged them to a game of flip cup. Loser spends the night in their tighty whities.” She looks back at the small group, smirking. “They were a lot more enthusiastic about that penalty when they thought they were gonna win.”

Anne laughs. “That’s priceless.”

“Yeah,” Lardo smirks, “I try. So what brings you to the Haus? I don’t think I’ve ever met you before.”

“How rude of me,” Anne says, sticking her hand out for a shake, “My name is Anne Berkowitz. I’m trying to force my ex-boyfriend to talk to an old friend of his. He obviously really misses him but he’s too wimpy to actually reach out.”

Lardo accepts the shake, processing.

“My name is Larissa, but most people here call me Lardo. Berkowitz… Do you do photography?”

“Yes,” Anne says, smile brightening, “I do, are you familiar with my work?”

“Yeah dude,” Lardo says, “I love your work. I’m glad you decided to branch out into human subjects, you’re really good at capturing emotion.”

“Thank you,” Anne says, beaming at this point. “How’s work going on your magnum opus?”

“How’d you know about that?” Lardo asks, surprised.

“I follow you on Instagram,” Anne confides, “it’s my personal one, not my work one, so it’s a little less obvious that it’s me.”

“Oh,” Lardo says, seemingly still a bit shocked, “how’d you find my insta?”

“I was looking into the Samwell men’s hockey team, my ex’s old friend plays on it, and I found your account. You seemed pretty cool so I decided to follow.”

“Dude, you’re a pretty famous photographer and model, who I only pretended not to recognize just so I wouldn’t seem weird, and you follow me on Instagram? And I didn't even _know_?”

Anne belly laughs at that, clasping Lardo’s shoulder.

“I’m barely famous, you’re just biased because you’re an art major.”

“Point,” Lardo says, “so… do you wanna play flip cup?”

“Sure,” Anne says, “It’s been a while since someone really trounced my ass at something.”

Then it’s Lardo’s turn to laugh, leading her over to the table and signaling for a guy in a toga and a guy with a wreath to join them.

True to prediction, Lardo thoroughly trounces her and then burps in her face loud enough to make a lesser man quake. Anne may be ever so slightly in love.

Then she sees Kent.

“Oh, my ex is here. He didn’t even bother to say hi, how rude.”

“Where?” Lardo asks.

She points to Kent and Lardo gives her a pained look.

“Your ex is Kent Parson? Like Captain of the Aces, leading the NHL in points and assists Kent Parson?”

“I take it you’re a fan?” Anne asks amusedly.

“I think everyone that’s into hockey is kind of obligated to be his fan,” she says, cuffing Anne on the shoulder.

Anne just laughs.

“I wonder which of my boys is hiding a former friendship with Kent Motherfucking Parson from me.”

“Jack Zimmerman,” Anne reveals.

It’s not really a secret, so she doubts Kent will mind.

“Oh that’s right,” Lardo says, “they played together in Juniors didn’t they? But wasn’t that like six years ago?”

“Yeah,” Anne shrugs, “they kind of fell out of touch, but they used to be really close.”

“Huh,” Lardo says. “He looks kind of bro-ey in person. I think this means I’m contractually obligated to school his ass at flip cup.”

Anne laughs. “I think I’m going to wander off and find myself another drink, I’ll come find you in a bit.”

She pushes her way out into the hallway and onto the porch, where she remembers there being a cooler and a guy with a mustache that can only be pulled off if there’s a good personality behind it. So the jury's still out on that one. It’s not too hard to find him or to get him to procure a solo cup full of something called “tub juice” which sounds pretty objectively disgusting, but she’s not really one to judge.

She downs it fast enough that she doesn’t really have to taste it, and the guy nods approvingly as he pours her a second cup. She raises it in a toast and wanders back into the house. At which point she sees him. The man, the myth, the legend, the clone. Jack Zimmerman.

She’s curious, okay? Who wouldn’t want to meet their clone?

As she draws closer, she’s pleased to note that she’s taller than him. Possibly even if she took the heels off, actually.

He catches sight of her, gaze gliding over her for a moment before returning in confusion. Seems he’s noticed the resemblance.

He’s talking to the same twink Kent had been talking to earlier, and it looks like they were making googly eyes at each other before she showed up. She hopes that doesn’t become a thing she has to comfort Kent about.

“Hey,” she says, “I’m Anne.”

The twink looks between the two of them. Seems he's noticed the similarities as well.

“I’m Bitty,” he says, mildly disgruntled, “Jack, is this… a relative of yours?”

“No,” Jack says, just as confused as Bitty.

She knows it’s kind of messed up, but she’s pretty sure the tub juice contained at least five shots of… some kind of alcohol; so her actions are justifiable if she turns her head and squints. She’s gonna mess with them.

She gets very close to Jack, squinting at him.

“Hey,” she says, “were you adopted? Because... I was adopted and separated from my twin at birth, and I can't help but notice…”

She watches his expression morph from confusion to horror, as he turns to Bitty, who is holding a shocked hand over his mouth.

“Oh my god.” She says. She's laughing, but she also feels kind of bad. “I’m sorry, I drank the tub juice and we look really similar, for some reason my drunk brain saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to mess with you.”

Jack visibly sags in relief.

“You really had me for a moment there, eh?”

“Yeah…” she says. She's not really sure what else to say, and she's way too drunk to be trusted with high stakes social interactions. She should probably get the hell out of dodge post haste.

“Well, have a good party.” It's a lame conclusion, but she's a photographer, not a fucking communications major. So it's whatever.

She wanders off. That's probably one of the weirder things she's done, but at least she can blame the tub juice. Plus now her doppelganger has a weird story to tell.

She finds Kent hovering by Lardo and points him in Jack’s direction. Lardo finishes picking out an Instagram filter, and Anne sidles up to her.

“So how’s life as an art major treating you?” She asks.

Lardo snorts. “I have spent more time bedazzling than any adult reasonably should, but otherwise it’s going ok. I’m doing a showcase at a gallery in February.”

“That sounds great, can I come?”

Lardo blushes. “I mean, yeah, but you don’t have to. Besides, don’t you live kind of far away?”

“Eh,” Anne says, “I’m a few hours drive out, but I own a gallery in New York, and I’ve been thinking of opening one in Boston as well. I can schedule my trip to look at real estate up there in February and drop by your gallery on my way back. Would that be ok?”

“Yeah,” Lardo says, smiling widely, “that’d be great.”

“We should exchange numbers,” Anne says, “so you can keep me updated on the event.”

“For sure,” Lardo says, “gotta stay updated.”

“Then we should go find a nice corner to make out in.”

Lardo laughs and pulls her down into a kiss.

 

\----

 

They exchange numbers, then kiss more, then talk more. They’re in the middle of a discussion about the virtues of pancakes versus waffles when Kent storms into the room, crowd parting in his wake.

“Looks like it didn’t go well,” Anne says. She grabs Lardo’s shoulders, staring soulfully into her eyes. “Remember me.”

“I will,” Lardo says, matching her dramatics without missing a beat.

“It didn’t go well,” Kent says, braking in front of her, “and I’d like to go now.”

Anne gives Lardo a meaningful look.

“I’ll call you,” Lardo promises.

And she does.


	6. Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another POV switch! Next week is going to be two chapters again, with more POV switching. Also I may write actual porn that goes on for more than two sentences and includes a main pairing at some point in the near future... definitely within the month... ;;)

Jack stares off after Kent, shaking from the emotional conversation, but also baffled at Kent’s parting statement. Missing piece? Is Kent admitting that he doesn’t actually think Jack is the one? Had he been lying all along instead of just deluding himself? But why had he said our? Had it been a slip of the tongue?

Bitty rises from the floor, clutching the key to his room, looking sheepish and just as confused as Jack.

“I’m sorry Jack,” he says, “I wasn’t prying, I just fumbled with my key trying to get into my room and it fell. What little I did hear was so far out of context I couldn’t hope to understand it anyways-- not that I want you to explain,” he says, face reddening, “I respect your privacy and all that--”

Bitty is getting anxious now, and the discomfort rolling off him in waves is not interacting well with the anxiety Jack is feeling after his conversation with Kent. He cuts Bitty off mid-ramble.

“I need to--”

He doesn’t even bother finishing his sentence, just jerks a thumb towards his doorway, and shuts it probably a tad too harshly in Bitty’s face before crumpling to the ground to shake. 

He had been comfortable. To the point where he barely thought about Kent outside of hoping he was okay. But now his routine, his carefully cultivated habit of not thinking of Kent has been effectively crushed. He doesn’t know what Kent wants. Doesn’t know if Kent lied to manipulate him into getting back together with him or if he genuinely believes Jack is still the one. Part of him still wants to believe that Kent is right. That they really are destined to be together. 

But he can clearly remember how that ended last time. With the collapse of a seven-year friendship. Of a partnership on the ice that felt as natural as breathing and smashed a shitton of records. 

Besides, he isn’t good for Kent. He doesn’t know what's making Kent think that he’s the one, but it’s obviously not true. Kent had agreed with him on that until recently. So what made him change his mind?

Part of Jack really wishes he had let Kent explain himself, but he knows if he did he might have let Kent convince him to give him another chance. To open his heart again before Kent ultimately comes to the realization that his luck is still shit and, oops, it isn’t Jack after all. So maybe his motives aren’t entirely selfless, he’s not only concerned with preventing Kent’s luck from getting even shittier. He also can’t handle the possibility that Kent might get him to fall right back in love, and then leave him for whoever destiny has tied him to. So sue him, whatever, he has a right to protect his heart and--

There’s a knock on his door, reverberating off his spine.

“Jack, are you okay?”

He doesn’t respond, can’t really with the hole he’s digging himself into forcing his anxiety to squeeze itself to the forefront of his mind. He’s shaking and hyperventilating, and probably definitely having a panic attack.

“I’m coming in,” Bitty says.

Jack doesn’t stop him, just centers himself a little so he doesn’t fall when Bitty opens the door.

“Oh, Jack,” Bitty says, closing the door and dropping to his knees, “Deep breaths, okay?”

He places one hand gently on Jack’s back, the other on his shoulder.

“Breathe with me.”

Bitty takes deep, slow breaths, and Jack mimics him until his breathing calms.

“Thank you,” he says weakly.

“Of course,” Bitty says, readjusting to sit cross-legged on the floor.

“Do you want to talk about it, want a hug, or want to be alone?”

“... a hug.”

It’s awkward and lopsided at first, but then Bitty huffs an annoyed sigh and moves in front of Jack, nestling in between his legs. It’s… strangely intimate, but Bitty doesn’t make a big deal about it, so Jack doesn’t either.

They stay that way for a long time, and Bitty doesn’t stop hugging him until Jack says “thank you.”

They break apart, and Bitty doesn’t respond, just nods and settles back down next to him, comfortably sharing warmth. It’s silent for a while, just their breathing filling the air, much calmer now. 

Bittle speaks first.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Jack says.

Bitty nods, but stays. The room is silent again until suddenly Jack can’t stand it anymore.

“Maybe. It’s just…” he pauses, searching for the words. “I miss him.”

He guesses there’s not really much else to say on the matter. It’s not like Bitty would believe any of it anyways. 

Bitty hums in thought.

“Well then maybe you should try talking to him again. When Y'all have both cooled down and you have your heads on straight.”

Jack sighs, rubbing his hand over his face.

“I don’t think it’ll end well if I do. We aren’t good for each other. He has… something really important he needs to be doing, and I’d just end up distracting him.”

Bitty seems unsatisfied with that answer, but he doesn’t push, seemingly accepting the fact that he doesn’t have enough information to provide a lot of input.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says, “I’d explain, but it’s not really my place ya’know?”

“I understand. It’s private, and that’s fine. It’s good if you to keep his secret even if you don’t intend to continue being his friend.”

Jack flinches a little at that, he can feel it. He hasn’t really thought of it that way. He knows from an outsider’s perspective it seems like he doesn’t intend to talk to Kent ever again, knows that from the way he phrased all that that’s the most logical thing to assume. But he’s just been assuming that one day Kent will find his true love and start talking to Jack again, that they could go back to the way they were before. 

Sure, maybe Jack knows that he’ll miss being more than just friends, that he’ll always know what it’s like to be with Kent. 

And yeah, it’s true that he still hasn’t found anyone that can match Kent for him. No one that can fill that gaping hole Kent left behind. That could quite possibly make things awkward.

And there’s always the possibility that Kent would never find his love, that he’ll just wander the earth forever, alone and searching. As time passes another, terrible option has been making itself known as well. That Kent might never find his love because he can’t; because his bad luck will catch up to him and finally kill him like it seems to be so very close to doing. That he’ll lose his career, or get paralyzed like he very nearly did not six months ago, or he’ll just stop caring because it’s been so long and he still hasn’t found them and did he ever really care in their first place? Because it never really seemed like he was looking that hard, and sometimes jack just wishes he could be there, that he could help, but he can’t, he can’t let himself do that, because he might fall in love and get his heart broken all over again, can’t do that to Kent and potentially distract—

“Jack, I need you to breathe for me.”

Jack started hyperventilating without even noticing, but Bitty is there, and he has his hand on Jack’s back again, rubbing soothing circles.

“It’s all right,” he says, “Just breathe with me again. You’re here, everything is okay.”

They breathe for a few moments, Jack syncing himself with Bitty again, grateful and grounded.

“Thank you,” Jack says roughly, embarrassed by his second panic attack of the night.

“Don’t mention it. Just…” he hesitates, “I think you might want to talk to him again at some point. I know you’re not ready for it now, and I know Kent has something he needs to do before Y'all can reconcile, but I think missing him is taking a toll on you. The healthy thing is to acknowledge that and let that be okay. Maybe talk to him at some point.”

Jack sighs.

“I want to. So bad. But I know if I do I’d just be distracting him. He… what he’s doing is important,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “it’s life or death, and I don’t want to distract him.”

Jack rubs his hand over his face.

“It’s been six years, and I still miss him like hell, but he has to do this. The fact that he came here tonight makes me think he might be giving up, and I can’t let him do that. Not after so long.”

Bitty seems confused, and a little frustrated by the generalizations, and Jack wants so badly to just dump everything on him, to say his piece and be done, but he knows he can’t. So he watches as Bitty takes a moment, his features smoothing out again.

“Alright Jack,” he says, “you know the situation best. But if you ever need someone to talk to, just know you can always come to me. Or if you’re having a panic attack, or just need to be around someone.”

He puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder, smiling at him.

“I can’t replace Kent, but I think if you spent more one on one time with people it might help that loneliness a little.”

Jack isn’t sure what his face looks like, but he knows he makes one at that. Bitty just laughs a little.

“It’s okay, we all get a little lonely sometimes. I know you’re surrounded by plenty of people every day, sweaty hockey players abound and all that, but groups of people don’t often help with loneliness. Being around someone one on one, talking with someone you know cares about you, that’s what helps.”

Jack beginning to look at Bitty with new eyes. When he had first come here Jack had thought he was immature, had scoffed at his inability to take checks. But he is growing, getting better at taking checks, mellowing out a little bit. Though that exuberant energy he displays for Beyoncé and baking and certain aspects of hockey has certainly grown on Jack. 

Now he’s seeing a new part of Bitty as well, a part that isn’t as full of excitement and nervous energy, this grounded, reasonable part of him. Maybe it’s just what happens when he’s in a position where others need his help, where he knows clearly how to help them. 

Whatever it is, Jack likes it. Not that he doesn’t like other sides of Bitty, because he really really does. But it’s just… nice. Nice learning about different sides of him, seeing his personal growth, helping him grow, being around him. Bitty is nice.

“Yeah,” he says eventually, “I’m gonna take you up on that.”

Bitty smiles brilliantly at that, picking himself up off the ground and holding a hand out to Jack. 

Jack accepts, and Bitty helps him hoist himself up off the floor.

But he underestimates how sore his knees will be from sitting on the floor that long. They give out beneath him, and suddenly he’s falling forward, yanking Bitty down with him. He almost headbutts him in the stomach, but he let’s go of Bitty’s hand before that can happen. Which causes Bitty to overbalance and begin falling back, with Jacks head, and the rest of his body, still continuing its path towards the floor. 

Jack lands, palms slapping against the floor, on top of Bitty. Who managed to catch himself, most likely painfully, with a hand behind him. He's still fallen flat on his ass though and is clearly wincing from it. 

Jack is bracketing Bitty’s torso with his arms, face near pressed up against his chest. He looks up and there’s a moment where they’re face to face and catching their breath together. With how close they are, they’re basically breathing the same air. It’s just a few seconds too long, and Jack is looking into Bitty’s eyes, and he thinks he sees, for the barest second, his gaze flick down to his mouth.

Then Bitty starts to laugh. A full, joyful, lovely belly laugh. Before he even realizes it, Jack is chuckling too. He rolls off Bitty and flops next to him, and they laugh together until Jack starts to tear up a little.

“Couple of professional athletes we are.” Bitty chokes out through his laughter after a while.

“God that smarts,” Bitty complains good-naturedly, “tryna lift you off your butt and I broke mine.”

Jack laughs harder, and Bitty’s right there with him. He misses Kent like hell, probably won’t ever stop. But for now he’s just going to let himself be okay. 


	7. Bitty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! It’s time for Bitty’s POV! Next chapter should be up in a few minutes :)

So Bitty has gotten himself into a bit of trouble. 

Because he knows now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is very much in love with Jack Zimmermann.

The problem with this is that Jack is either straight, or very much in love with Kent Parson.

Bitty’s feelings are new. He realized not too long ago, when he and Jack were baking and the light from the window had hit his face just right, and his heart had felt like it was being squeezed in his chest.

Moments like those are bound to give him a heart attack. For goodness sakes, there’s only so much romantic tension his poor little heart can take before it bursts.

Because he knows Jack isn’t interested. Either he really was just friends with Kent, and is most likely straight as previously assumed, or they were something more, and Jack is clearly still hung up on him. In either case, he has no reason to have any romantic interest in Bitty.

Bitty is a catch, but he’s not trying to compete with an extremely successful hockey player who already has the advantage of having Jack hung up on him. A hockey player who, if he’s being entirely honest, had made him feel a certain way tonight.

He may not be reading correctly between the lines about the true nature of Jack and Kent’s relationship, but there is no way  _ that  _ boy is straight. He had very clearly been eyeing Bitty up earlier tonight, which was flattering. If he wasn’t already half head over heels for Jack he might even have flirted more, seen how it had played out.

But Kent is gone now, so it’s a moot point.

Despite the fact that Kent might be his competition, Bitty still wants to help Jack reconcile. He’d been so sad earlier tonight, it just doesn’t seem right to let him keep wallowing, no matter how important of a task Kent has.

Besides, Kent is a grown man who can most likely be trusted not to get distracted by Jack’s presence, if the task is really that important.

It all seems a bit suspicious to Bitty. He’s beginning to suspect that all the excuses they make not to talk to each other are just that: excuses. That they’re just emotionally constipated enough that they can’t handle serious conversations or the occasional argument when it’s clear that missing each other takes more of a toll than either combined. Bitty is beginning to suspect that this dilemma requires the delicate touch of his intervention.

Now, normally he wouldn’t go meddling willy nilly in affairs that don’t concern him, but it’s obvious that these two need his help. Or at least  _ some  _ help. His just so happens to be what’s on hand.

There’s a part of him that’s hitting itself for being so willing to meddle. A part that’s saying  _ if you just keep your mouth shut and your head down maybe you can help him get over him. Maybe he could be yours. _

A part that knows that if he helps Kent and Jack reconcile they might start seeing each other, and he might be left by the wayside.

But he knows enough to know that when you care enough about a person to miss them even after six years without contact, those feelings aren’t going to go away overnight. That maybe, if he gets his hopes up about helping Jack get over Kent, it’ll just lead to disappointment when he can’t.That reconciliation with Kent is what will really make Jack happy.

And that’s what Bitty really wants, is for Jack to be happy.

 

——

 

When Bitty wakes up the next morning he has a new follower on Twitter. 

Which isn’t particularly unusual, he’s a relatively popular vlogger, he gets followers pretty often.

But this particular follower stands out. Namely because it’s Kent Parson.

He’s not really sure how Kent found his Twitter, but he supposed it can’t have been too hard, just a few searches or a quick ask around should have done the trick. He’s kind of touched. His chat with Kent had been nice, and it always feels good to know he made a good impression on someone. Especially considering that last he saw Kent he had technically been eavesdropping on a private conversation of his.

Besides, this melds quite well with Bitty’s plan to help Jack. Having a line of communication with Kent will likely be useful in helping the two reconcile.

Judging by the parts of the argument Bitty had heard, it seems as though Kent had been attempting to do as much himself.

Which is another point in his favor.

Though Kent had also seemed to have given up, and decided to look for whatever he was looking for when he left.

_ “I’ll let you know when I find our missing piece.” _

Bitty is kind of dying to know what the hell that meant, though Jack had seemed pretty confused himself, judging by the face he made.

The whole thing is incredibly mysterious, and Bitty hopes that eventually one of them will decide to explain in full. It’s not his business, so he won’t pry, but he is desperately curious.

It’s not his fault, he’s from Georgia, his mother raised him a gossip through and through.

Which isn’t to say he’ll go spreading anything that ain’t his business to spread, he just likes to know things. It’s nice, being a keeper of information, nothing more satisfying than being in the know.

He can smell a juicy secret from a mile away, and this one just reeks of import and exclusivity. Deep down inside, somewhere he is trying very hard to suppress, he is happy to have stumbled on this secret. Even if he doesn’t really know much about it, even if it wasn’t shared willingly, it’s nice to have that connection with Jack. To know how important Kent is to him.

He’s a gossip and a meddler, and these are definitely flaws, but he also cares very very much about certain people. Which is why he gathers information, why he meddles.

He drums his fingers against his desk and checks Twitter, the notification from Kent glaring back up at him. Gnawing on his lip, he presses the follow button on Kent’s account and leans back in his chair.

His phone drops from his grip onto his lap and he runs his hands through his hair. He isn’t quite sure how to approach this situation. He wants to make Jack happy, but he also wants to be the thing that is making Jack happy. But he still isn’t sure whether Jack is even remotely interested in him. He sure hadn’t seemed to be before.

He still doesn’t, really. So he commits to the idea of hatching a plan to get Jack and Kent talking again. If he does eventually end up getting together with Jack he doesn’t want to be the kind of controlling boyfriend that polices who his significant other does and doesn’t interact with. He doesn’t want to be a jealous person, it just isn’t in good form.

If Bitty ends up getting Jack to fall for him, he doesn’t want to be second best, or a placeholder. He wants to know that Jack and Kent aren’t a thing for sure.

Besides, he feels like this is the right thing to do. He doesn’t know why, but there’s this sense in his gut, this thrumming satisfaction with the idea that has him delving further into the plan.

It just feels right. He’s certain of it.


	8. Kent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one again! These ones were kind of short so I decided to post them together again, but next week we’re back to one at a time. Annnnd next week we get actual smut! So stay tuned if that’s something you’re into ;p

“You didn’t even pitch the “there’s another person” idea?”

“What was I supposed to say? I know we haven’t talked in five years, but I think we should get back together. Also my ex girlfriend says we have to be polyamorous now, with an unquantified amount of people I  _ haven’t even met yet. _ ”

“Or,” Anne says, “counterpoint, you could try explaining it like a  _ normal human being.” _

“How?”

She clears her throat, schooling her face and voice into calmness, then seriousness.

“It’s you Jack, I can feel it. I know I doubted myself before, but it’s because there’s a third. My luck is better around you, but it’s not fixed completely because I’m still missing a piece of the puzzle. Please come to Vegas with me, be on my team and help me find them.”

She affects a gruff voice and a more obvious Canadian accent.

“Oh Kent, why didn’t you tell me this years ago, we could have been in a happy relationship, where you would be safer and we could find the third. But it’s okay, I’m glad you finally got up the courage to tell me.”

Then she starts miming making out with the air and Kent slashes a hand through his imaginary self.

“Okay okay I get the picture.” He pauses. “Aside from Jack’s part that was really well phrased, why didn't you just coach me through this before?”

She stares at him like he’s crazy.

“Because I assumed you would approach the conversation like a normal human being.”

“Not all of us are well versed in polyamory negotiations! Besides,” he says, cutting off what looked to be the beginning of a large protest on Anne’s part, “Jack kept cutting me off every time I tried to explain anyways.”

“So go back and explain, now that you know how. Make him listen. Talk over him, whatever. You have something pretty important you need to tell him.”

“Honestly, the way I left things, I don’t think I should come back until I’ve found the third, whoever they are.”

She throws her head back and groans dramatically for a prolonged moment. When she levels again, she points an accusing finger at him as though she’s about to begin lecturing him. Then she pauses.

“You know what?” She says, crossing her arms over her chest,  “I’m done.”

Silence hangs heavy in the air. For a pregnant moment he stares at her, processing blankly, and then he can feel his nails involuntarily begin to dig into his palms. Because, shit. He’s fucked up if he’s managed to drive the only person in his life that can actually put up with his bullshit away. His face crumples, which is pathetic, but he can feel it happening—

“Oh no, not with you, dear,” she corrects, “you’re a bit of a dumbass, but I love you to bits and I’m way too invested in your personal wellbeing and how your whole situation plays out to leave now.” She sighs. “I’m just done offering you advice, it’s getting repetitive. You know what I think you should do, and you’re going to continue to not do it regardless of how much breath I waste. So, I’ll listen to your problems, and I am very open to any new developments, but no more advice from me.”

“Oh,” Kent says, feeling the jittery beginnings of panic and sadness leaching out of him, “well, I like your advi-”

“Oh shut up,” she says, dismissively slashing a hand through the air, “that statement is way too obviously untrue, just bring it in.”

She holds out her arms, and he folds himself into her hug.

 

——-

 

Later that night, when the dust has settled and Kent is curling up in his hotel bed, he remembers Bitty. The guy Jack obviously has a thing with. He’s not sure if they’re dating, or just dancing around each other, but he knows what Jack looks like when he has feelings for someone, has seen it plenty of times himself.

He’s sad that Jack is moving on, worried that this might complicate matters between them, might make it harder to introduce a third. But he also likes Bitty a lot, and if Jack likes Bitty too, it’s worth trying to be friends with him.

He blearily paws at the bedside table for his phone, unplugging it and screwing his eyes shut tight as he blindly adjusts the brightness.

Unfortunately, he just ended up turning it higher, so he’s blinded by the screen when he opens his eyes. He isn’t sure what he expected, that was pretty obviously something that would require luck to pull off. Sighing, he turns the brightness down for real this time and texts Anne asking if she knows any of Bitty’s social media.

She responds with a username in less than a minute, which is the kind of thing that always makes Kent concerned about her shitty sleep schedule, but he decides to keep it to himself beyond a pointed  **Thx, good night** to indicate that it really is bedtime now.

Anne just texts back  **nice try** and a heart emoji, so he rolls his eyes and opens Twitter.

He isn’t sure why pressing the follow button makes him so nervous, but he does it, rolling his eyes at himself for the anxiety and shutting his phone off. He uses the glow of the screen to find the cord again and plugs it in, turning on to his side and closing his eyes.

He’s anxious, nervous to know whether or not Bitty will decide to follow back, but he squashes the urge to check pretty effectively. Reasonable people are asleep right now, and Bitty seems to be a pretty reasonable person.

The night air is silent around him, near still, almost stifling despite it being winter. He thinks of the way Jack and Bitty interact, and he wants Jack to have that, wants him to be happy. He also desperately wants Bitty’s approval.

To be fair, he wants everyone’s approval, but for some reason he is especially averse to the idea of disappointing Bitty. Maybe it was the easy southern drawl, or the fast smile, or the friendliness that all just screams likeable person. Maybe it was the fact that if he and Jack end up together his opinion will likely play a large role in how much time Kent gets to spend with Jack, how well their hopeful eventual reconciliation will go.

The fact of the matter is, Kent may not know Bitty very well, but he’s certain he wants to.


	9. Bitty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *TW FOR HOMOPHOBIA/ SLURS*  
> More details at end notes 
> 
> There's porn in this chapter! And it's actually between core characters and lasts longer than a few paragraphs ;)

It turns out he gets along with Kent like a house on fire. He messages Kent over twitter apologizing for their embarrassing encounter, and Kent takes it entirely in stride.

He’s… nice, and funny, and charming. It’s not long until he shares his personal number with Bitty and they’re texting every day.

Bitty doesn’t tell Jack. He tells himself it’s so that he doesn’t mess up his attempts to get Kent and Jack talking again, but he also knows his fear of disappointing Jack plays no small role in that decision.

He’s not sure how Jack will feel about his interactions with Kent. There doesn’t seem to be too much ill will there, which greatly confuses Bitty, seeing as they’re not talking. But there is tension. Which Bitty isn’t quite sure what to do with.

They obviously sorely miss one another, which is why Bitty plans to get them interacting again, but he knows there’s something he’s missing, some unknown element.

He sighs, kneading dough more forcefully than is likely entirely necessary.

He’s been trying to think of ways to subtly get those two in the same room for the past few months, but he’s honestly drawing a blank. It’s hard to do, when the two people are on opposite sides of the nation. On top of that, Jack’s graduation is looming less than a month away, and he’s not even sure if they’re going to spend any time together afterwards.

For all the time they’ve been spending together, they’re still just friends. Friendships are hard enough to maintain after graduation, but when graduating and going into a professional hockey career? Please.

Bitty is downright punching the dough now. Shitty wanders in to the kitchen, making a sound as though he’s about to start a conversation, then obviously notices Bitty’s mood and ducks quickly out of the room.

He huffs and returns to beating his dough senseless. If the conversation was important he would have continued talking regardless of Bitty’s ire.

Friends stay friends after graduation, regardless of his shitty high school experiences. It’s not unheard of, and it will not be unheard of in this instance.

His insecurities aside, he knows Jack isn’t the kind of person to cut him off once he joins the NHL. But people grow apart.

He sighs shakily. The dough doesn’t need to be kneaded anymore. Probably hasn’t for a bit, so he sets about getting it ready to become bread. If he and Jack naturally drift apart, there’s nothing he can do about it. He just needs to enjoy the time they do have together.

——

Before he knows it, it’s graduation day and he’s watching Jack and Shitty get handed their diplomas. He hasn’t done anything to help Kent, and he’s hitting himself for his lack of creativity.

If he had known that Jack planned on signing for the Providence Falconers before their game versus the Aces a month or two ago he would have convinced Jack to take him to the game. it would have been easy with the excuse of watching his chosen team in action. Then he could have done… something to make him run into Kent.

But now he has the more pressing matter of how he is going to keep in touch with Jack on hand. Providence isn’t that far, but 45 minutes is a long time to drive on any sort of regular basis, and Jack’s schedule is bound to be busy once he gets drafted.

After the ceremony, he says his goodbyes to Jack for the summer. But he can’t stop himself from thinking about the fact that Jack isn’t coming back to the Haus when the summer is over, that they’ll be losing a natural reason to spend time together.

When they hug it guts him.

He hurries off after with the excuse of packing up his room, but really he’s tamping down tears that he knows are going to burst at any moment. That goodbye had felt so final. It’s probably all in his head, but he can’t help but feel hollow, like Jack scooped something out of him.

He shoves his headphones in his ears and cranks his saddest playlist up, determined to cry it out while he packs up.

Which works marvelously for him until Jack careens into his room, gown still flapping behind him, and kisses him.

He holds Jack’s waist, reeling and kissing back like his life depends on it. They barely get a word in edgewise through the kissing, but Bitty can’t bring himself to mind one single second.

Jack promises they’ll talk later and runs back out, and Bitty smiles, and says a goodbye he actually feels good about this time. He plops down into his desk chair, giddy with excitement, and thinks I can’t wait to tell Kent.

Then he pauses. He can’t tell Kent. He hasn’t exactly said it, but Bitty knows that boy is dead in love with Jack. Just as gone on him as Bitty, if not more so.

They’ve been talking a lot recently, and they’ve become great friends, which is the whole reason why Kent had been the first person Bitty thought to tell. But he hasn’t even told Jack he’s talking to Kent yet. Which he is feeling pretty guilty about at the moment given the fact that they are now… something. Hopefully dating.

He sighs. He won’t tell Kent until it’s official.

——

  
He comes home for the summer, and his mom greets him with her usual open arms and cry of “Dicky!”

When he falls into her embrace she noticeably stiffens mid hug, then forces herself to relax again.

He breaks the hug and attempts to subtly sniff his underarms.

“What is it mama?” He says, continuing to grip her shoulders. “Do I smell?”

She laughs, but it’s a bit of a nervous one, which just further confuses him.

“Oh nothing honey,” she says, “just glad to have you back is all.”

He’s still suspicious, but she’s bustling off now, wrapping him up in a whirlwind discussion of new jam recipes she’s trying out. He can tell she’s deflecting, but he doesn’t for the life of him know what, so he keeps his mouth shut. If there’s something she needs to talk to him about she’ll find a way to talk to him about it.

—-

That night he overhears a private conversation. Which seems to be becoming a running theme in his life.

He’s walking down the hallway and he hears his name. He knows they’re talking about him so he can’t help but eavesdrop a little.

“-I could feel it on him when he came in,” his mother says, “faint, but powerful. I know we said we’d wait to talk to him until he turned twenty five, but he’s obviously been dabbling.”

“You don’t know that,” his dad says, “you said it wasn’t his-“

“Yes, but it’s intertwined, his is active now too.”

Bitty doesn’t know what on earth they could be talking about. Which is also becoming a recurring thing. He shakes his head and walks away. This sort of thing desperately needs context, and if his parents want to provide it they will.

For now he’s just going to mind his damn business for once and go to bed.

—-  
The next day his mother and Coach call him into the sitting room and sit him down on the couch. He figures it’s about whatever they were talking about last night, but he still can’t for the life of him think what that could possibly be.

He’s spent most of his life around his parents, so he can usually read them like a book.

They seem nervous. About a four out of ten on the “potential freak out scale.” They’re unsettled, and it’s unsettling him.

“So Dicky…” his mother starts, “There’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you. We were going to wait until your twenty fifth but—“ she looks to her husband— “well I can sense you’ve been dabbling. So I guess this is less of an explanation conversation and more of a crash course?”

His mother has a nervous tic; she picks at threads when she has nothing better to do with her hands and nerves to expel. She’s damn near about to unravel the entire couch at the rate she’s going. His father stills her hand.

He’s confused, to say the least. He’s not sure what he’s been dabbling in other than… romantic entanglements? Oh god, do his parents know he’s gay? Do they know he’s with Jack? Is that what this is about? He has plans to tell them, but he wants to do it on his own time, and if that’s what this is about, he’s about to be forced into coming out to them.

“So I guess I’ll start with some hot tips,” his mother says. Which, dear lord he hopes this conversation is not going the same disgusting direction his mind is.

“With magic it’s very important to know the language of the incantation. Usually it’s Latin, but it’s important that you’re able to interpret the text for a better understanding of the spell’s purpose.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bitty blurts. Because, what?

“Well a lot of the little summaries provided in spell books are perfunctory, vague, or even downright inaccurate. The incantations themselves usually aren’t that much better, but they help to get a fuller picture of what your casting. You can also come to us at any time before you cast something, we might have seen the spell before.”

“Spell?” Bitty asks weakly, feeling the sudden urge to fall into the nearest sofa and process this insanity for a few years.

“Honey,” Coach says, “I think we should start from the beginning.”

His mother scrutinizes him, taking in the shock, and confusion and frowning.

“Is any of this making a lick of sense to you?” She asks.

Bitty mutely shakes his head, weakly wondering if he’s being punk’d. He knows his parents though, knows that’s not really something they’d do.

“Oh honey,” his mother says, aghast, “I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Your latent abilities are sparking up so I assumed…”

She sighs.

“I guess the first thing you need to know is that magic is real.”

——

So his mother is a witch. Same as her mother, and her grandma before that.

But she hasn’t met another magic practitioner in years.

“Which is why I was so surprised to sense someone else’s spell work on you.”

“Excuse me; someone else’s what?”

“Well I’m not sure what it is specifically, but it doesn’t seem to harbor malicious intent,” she says, humming and waving her arms in an assessing manner around Bitty’s person.

“Well,” she says cheerily, “it seems something good will come of this anyways.”

She goes on to answer all of Bitty’s questions, which are numerous and somewhat incredulous to boot.

She takes it all in stride, which frankly does wonders for his ability to compose himself. When he begins to calm down, he realizes that this actually explains some things from his childhood.

How she seemed able to keep his hair cowlick free without any gel, how she had beautiful flowers in bloom despite never really doing much gardening, how he had never gotten pushed in a locker again after he told his mother about the bullying. They hadn’t liked him after, but they ignored him. Which was all he really wanted.

He feels himself tearing up at the realization. He’s in the kitchen, baking to help clear his mind. His mother is out grocery shopping and Coach is in the living room watching a football game.

His mother has always looked out for him, always helped him when he needed it most. He doesn’t think he’s ready to tell her about Jack, their relationship is so new. But he does want her to meet him. He’s so important to him, just like his mom, and he wants them to meet each other.

Even if she doesn’t know why, he owes that to her.

She bustles through the doorway about thirty minutes later and he finishes peeling the apple he was working on before helping her unload the car.

She smiles at his approach. Shitty had handed him about ten reusable cloth grocery bags last year and instructed him to give them to his mother. Bitty had sighed and acquiesced, doubtful him mother would remember to use them, but it has been going surprisingly well.

He hoists the rest of the bags into his arms, letting his mother, back from her second trip, close the trunk for him.

He likes to think Jack would be proud of him for taking all seven bags instead of separating them into two trips like a sensible person.

At this point he doesn’t really mind the “eat more protein” chirps though. They come from a place of love. He sighs dreamily, setting the groceries on the wooden countertop, and leaning his hip against it.

Things have been going well with Jack. They Skype every night and text and call in between, and Bitty seriously can’t believe how much he loves the man. How happy he is to be loved back.

The refrigerator hums in protest as his mother leaves it open to load in perishables. She keeps shooting him these unreadable little looks, and he decides to take it as a cue to help her load everything in.

“So mama,” he says, grabbing a family sized box of strawberries and cramming them in the crisper, “I was wonderin’ if I could have a friend over for a few days this summer.”

“Of course Dicky!” She says, without hesitation. “Is it Jack, or that Mr.Crappy, or someone else?”

“It’s Jack.” He says, blushing at her easy read.

Honestly, he’s certain his mother would be happy regardless of who it was. He didn’t have a lot of friends in high school, or middle school. She’s just glad he has plenty now.

He invites Jack that night over Skype, and he laughs, admitting that he planned on doing the same thing.

Jack’s deep into a story about a hockey game in Juniors when Bitty’s phone starts vibrating on his bed.

It’s a deluge of cat pictures from Kent. They have an ongoing debate on whether cats or dogs are the better pet, which basically just culminates in a nightly battle of cute pictures.

He smiles fondly and turns his phone over, ready to listen to Jack again, but evidently he’s noticed.

Suddenly Bitty remembers that Jack and Kent are not on good terms, remembers his plans to get them talking. He’s been such a coward, unable to force himself to tell Jack, or to do anything to continue his plans. But he’s comfortable, happy as he is.

Besides, he now knows for a fact that Kent and Jack had dated. He knows it would be kind of crazy to continue trying to hatch plans to get his boyfriend to spend more time with his ex.

“Who was that?” Jack asks. It's curious but not unkind.

Bitty still winces, which sets Jack’s gaze sharpening.

“Uh. Kent Parson?” He admits, though it comes out more a question than anything.

“Oh.” Jack says, somewhat stunned.

“I’m sorry Jack, I know it’s weird to be friends with your ex, but we met at the Kegster and just got along so well, I can stop talking to him if you’re uncomfortable th-”

“Woah,” Jack says, “calm down. Do you really think i’m the kind of boyfriend that would make you stop talking to someone just because I didn't like them?”

“Well,” Bitty says, huffing a bit, “it would be reasonable to be upset, i’ve been talking to your ex and I didn't tell you.”

“I’m not in charge of who you talk to, you're your own person. Trying to police who you talk to would be controlling. Besides, I know I don’t really talk about Kent a lot, so there isn't a whole lot of reason to bring up the fact that you are.”

Bitty scrutinizes him through the screen.

“This might well be the strangest argument I have ever had.”

Jack laughs a little, and the tension breaks.

“I never thought I would end up with a boyfriend that actively tried to convince me to be angry at him. Though,” he smirks, “to each their own, eh?”

Bitty swipes a quelling hand at the air in front of his screen.

“Oh hush, you.”

\----

After that, the conversation returns somewhat smoothly to topics besides Kent Parson. Jack Buys a plane ticket out to Georgia for the Fourth of July weekend, and he buys Bitty a plane ticket to Providence for the week before Summer's end, which makes Bitty blush.

When he finally says goodnight to Jack and settles in, he grabs his phone and quickly shoots off the slew of dog pictures he'd gathered for Parson through the day.

He goes to bed with a huge smile on his face.

\----

Jack’s visit for the Fourth of July is going swimmingly. He's polite and charming, and his parents love him. Bitty even misses the concerned glance that his mother shoots Coach after she first hugs Jack in greeting. She does so well keeping whatever caused it to herself from then out that Bitty only ever sees her approval of Jack. Which there is plenty of, as he takes his mother’s obvious crush on Bad Bob in total stride, and is “a very polite young man” to boot. Which leaves Bitty wondering if he should tell his parents that they're dating.

But it’s still new, and he’s still scared. So for now, he keeps it to himself.

He takes Jack a few towns over, to the summer fair, while his parents are setting up for the barbecue. It’s not until tomorrow, but his dad is smoking a huge slab of brisket, and his mother is fussing over decorations, so that will all take a while.

It’s not until Jack is at the duck shooting game, hellbent on winning Bitty the grand prize, that he realizes this is their first date.

In his defense, they have been seeing each other for about a month now, and the actual dating part of the equation doesn't matter to him as much as just seeing Jack.

He's been happy with Skype calls and the memory of Jack’s lips pressed against his. But now, seeing Jack in person, trading chaste kisses in the dark corners of his house when he knows no one will find them, Jack slipping into his room at night to kiss him properly, then leaving him panting and blushing twenty minutes later to turn into his pillow and squeal?

It’s objectively better.

Jack is taking it slow because he knows Bitty is inexperienced, and Bitty is grateful for that, he is, but he is also damn frustrated. He wants to make the most of his four days with Jack, which means he’d like it if the man would put him out of his misery and touch his damn dick before he leaves.

The booth’s bell starts ringing an obnoxious victory tone, and next thing Bitty knows Jack is whirling around to face him with an excited grin and a large plush animal. He holds it out to get a good look at it, then laughs. It’s a cat.

Before he can think any better of it he's pulling Jack into a kiss, right there in the middle of the carnival.

It’s closed mouth and chaste, but Jack’s warm, chapped lips feel like heaven against his, and he’s just so happy he could burst. He cups Jack’s jaw with his hand, and he’s smiling so hard it can barely even be considered a kiss anymore, but he doesn't care.

Then he hears loud, obnoxious coughing cutting through the crowd to his right.

“Faggots.” It’s hidden under one of the coughs, but still clear as day. He tenses under Jack’s grip.

Bitty abruptly remembers himself, remembers they're in Georgia, not Samwell. Remembers just why he’s so afraid to tell his parents. He drops his hand back to his side, feeling Jack’s jaw tense at the kid’s statement. Sees his body go rigid, him start to turn.

He grabs Jack’s wrist.

“Don’t,” he says, “it’s not worth it.”

He thanks his lucky stars he’d forgotten himself out of town, else he knows this would have gotten back to his mamma faster than he could blink. He’s also glad this happened somewhere Jack likely won't be recognized, as hockey isn't really that popular here.

He's still sad he has to worry at all.

He clears his throat and turns away from Jack. The carnie shoots them a sympathetic look and Bitty flashes him a weak little smile in return.

“C’mon,” Bitty says to Jack, “let's go ride the Ferris wheel.”

\----  
The ride on the Ferris wheel is a bit tense, but they manage to get the mood back by the time they get to the teacups.

They don't kiss in public again, but when they get home Jack follows him up to his room to set the unnamed gigantic cat down next to señor bun, and kisses him senseless until he plops right down on the bed with them.

“Obnoxious kids aside,” Jack says, leaning over to cup Bitty’s face in his hands, “I had fun. When we get to providence we’ll spend all our time in my apartment, and we won’t have to sneak around or hide.”

Bitty hums in contentment and smiles at him.

“I’m holding you to that Mister Zimmerman.”

Jack kisses him again then; nudges his way between Bitty’s thighs to crawl up onto the bed with him. Bitty gasps into the kiss, Jack filling up the empty space with his tongue. It’s still a bit clumsy and unpracticed on his part, but he’s learning.

Bitty grabs Jack by the back of the neck and flips them both onto their sides, and now it’s Jack’s turn to gasp, and bare his neck, and isn't that interesting. He scrunched his hand up into Jack's hair, and he moans, rubbing himself against Bitty’s thigh. Bitty can feel his dick through his jeans, and they're both fully clothed, but if rutting against each other like teenagers is what he's getting today he will gladly take it.

He smiles into the kiss and presses his thigh up against Jack harder, and he makes this beautiful little noise. Then pants out a “wait.” Bitty disengages, letting Jack catch his breath. Taking in the flush on his face.

“You're so beautiful.”

Jack blushes deeper, and Bitty leans in for a kiss again, but Jack puts a hand on his chest.

“Your parents.” He says.

Bitty groans and rolls onto his side.

“Please do me a favor and never again bring up a man’s parents while he's in this state.”

“Sorry,” Jack laughs, pressing a kiss to Bitty’s temple, “I just know I'm too loud to do this while your parents are in the house.”

“I noticed, you filthy, gorgeous man.” Bitty says, growling playfully and flipping him over for a kiss on the lips.

“You liked it?” Jack asks.

“Does the sun rise in the east?” He questions, nipping Jack’s collarbone playfully.

“Maybe?” Jack gasps, sounding thoroughly distracted by Bitty’s teasing.

Bitty snorts in a manner that is certainly unattractive.

“It does darlin’, it does.”

\----

The next day is the barbecue, and practically the whole block was invited, so Bitty churns out what must be a record amount of pies before 1pm. When the guests arrive, he gets passed around to all kinds of people, many of whom quite obviously oggle Jack right in front of him. He has to bite back the urge to pointedly introduce Jack as his boyfriend on numerous occasions.

About an hour in someone points out a bit of flour that's likely been on his cheek the entire time, but when he shoots an accusing look at Jack he just shrugs and claims it looked too cute to get rid of. Bitty blushes right to the tips of his ears and stays that way until his meemaw approaches for a surprisingly strong hug.

At about two, when the sun is inching away from its firm position at the apex of the sky, Kent texts him about a half dozen of the most patriotic cats he’s ever seen in his life, plus a firework emoji, the american flag emoji, and a cat emoji. Bitty stifles a laugh, and Jack glances over his shoulder.

His expression is complicated, but there's definitely some fondness in there.

“I see Kent’s unhealthy obsession with cats is still alive and well, eh?”

Bitty giggles and googles “fourth of July dog”, his shoulders relaxing. He hadn't even realized they'd been tense in the first place.

“You should talk to him.” He says as casually as he can manage. He doesn’t look up from his phone.

The thing is, he’s talked to Jack about Kent briefly before, basically just long enough for Jack to confirm that they dated and assure him he was over him. But he’s also talked to Kent about Jack. Kent hasn't said anything about their romantic relationship, but the way he talks about Jack, it’s very clear he's not over him.

So Bitty is kind of crazy for snatching that opening to continue his “get Jack and Kent talking again” plan. Though he hasn't really done anything in the first place. It just feels like the right thing to do, and his momma always told him that if he was sure of something, he needed to act on it.

Which, now that he thinks about it, might be related to the whole magic thing.

He’s stopped scrolling through the pictures as he contemplates, but Jack still hasn’t responded.

Bitty turns to look at him, and he has this strange expression on his face, like he isn't sure what to do with Bitty.

Finally he speaks.

“I don't think that’s a good idea.”

Bitty makes a dismissive noise.

“Y'all obviously miss each other, so don't give me any nonsense right now. ‘Sides, you gotta at least be on civil terms for when i’m visiting you both at the same time.”

Jack shoots him an amused look.

“I’m sure I can manage to contain my man-pain for a few minutes if it’s for you.”

“Oh hush,” Bitty chastises, deciding to allow the side step, “let's go save my mother before she has a conniption.”

He gestures to the other side of the lawn, where his mother is currently fending off a minimum of five different party guests who seem to all be attempting to talk at once.

\----

Things noticeably simmer down around four, and most of the guests start to trickle out. Jack and Bitty are in the kitchen, trying to keep the bubble fight they're having friendly playful. It keeps veering towards romantic playful though, so Bitty puts his foot down and ends it when the third guest nearly walks in on them about to kiss.

Jack keeps pouting adorably and flicking little suds through the air at him, so he has to keep a steely gaze straight ahead to avoid getting roped in again.

By the time the final guest has trickled out they've finished all the dishes and taken out all the trash.

Jack calls out to Bitty’s parents that they're going to watch the fireworks, which is news to Bitty. At Bitty’s questioning look, he just tosses him the keys to the truck and says he’ll give him directions.

“I know where everything is in this town, you don't gotta direct me.”

“I want it to be a surprise though.” Jack grins. “So let me direct you.”

Bitty huffs, but hops in the front seat and turns the key in the ignition, letting Jack buckle up before tossing his arm over the seat and backing out of the driveway. When he’s safely on the road, he squeezes the back of Jack’s neck in a mirror of the night before, and relishes in the shiver it earns him.

He lets his arm drop down to the seat next to Jack, and Jack holds his hand without saying a word outside of directions. Bitty is so busy being happy that he gets to hold Jack's hand that he doesn't even realize where they're going until he’s parking.

Jack slips out of the car with a promise to be quick, and returns not five minutes later laden with takeout bags. He reaches into the glove compartment and withdraws some of Shitty’s reuseable grocery bags, these ones lined with insulators.

“Someone came prepared.” Bitty chirps lightheartedly.

The takeout is from his favorite restaurant, and he loves surprises; especially when they obviously have been planned out by the person surprising him. He also loves Jack, so honestly he’d take just about anything Jack wanted to give him. He's in a good mood.

“Yes I did,” Jack replies easily, “make a right at the stop sign up ahead.”

Bitty lifts his free hand over the takeout bags separating them to find Jack’s hand again, and he takes it with a smile that makes Bitty want to pull the car over right there and kiss him senseless on the side of the road. Instead he forces himself to peel his gaze away and focus on Jack's intermittent directions.

About twenty minutes later Bitty’s truck chugs to a stop at the top of a hill. The sun is just barely beginning to set, and Jack instructs him to put the car into reverse and back up next to the tree at the top of the hill. Bitty throws him a knowing little smile, sending the hand he throws over the seat straight towards the back of Jack’s neck without pretense this time, loving the little sigh he gets for his efforts.

He parks the car easily, if with a bit more showboating than necessary, and then looks expectantly at Jack. He hasn't lowered his hand from the back of his neck, stroking the little hairs there absentmindedly. Jack seems somewhat entranced, and Bitty gets that same feeling he gets from time to time, this total confidence in what the right thing to do is. And well, his mamma taught him right to follow that feeling. He leans in and kisses Jack, long, languid, and open mouthed, hand sliding from the back of his neck to the side, thumb resting under his chin, right up against his pulse.

Jack's shudders, and he can feel it at every point of connection they're maintaining, loves the way he's so pliant under his hands, loves everything about him.

But after a few minutes his neck starts to cramp from the angle and he has to pull back from the kiss, resting his forehead against Jack’s.

He wants so desperately to tell Jack he loves him but it's so early, he knows he needs to wait. So he settles for clearing his throat and stroking his hand down Jack’s chest.

“Well it’s only six thirty mister Zimmermann, fireworks won't be startin’ for another hour, what's your plan?”

Jack smiles and opens the car door, grabbing the bags of food as he goes.

“C’mon, I'll show you.”

He doesn't lead him far, just to the bed of the truck, where there are blankets and pillows and a wicker basket.

“Everything you need for a picnic, and watching the fireworks.”

“Oh Jack,” Bitty says, hand to his heart, “It's wonderful.”

“Thanks.” Jack says, rubbing his hand behind his neck. He climbs up onto the bed of the truck, and reaches a hand out to help haul Bitty up. Then he fishes around in the basket and sheepishly procures some fake plastic candles.

“I didn't want anything to light on fire so…”

Bitty laughs and tackles him into a kiss.

\----

Jack makes Bitty sit back as he unpacks all the takeout and sets out the candles and silverware. Bitty oohs and ahhs and generally encourages the process, watching the blush forming on the tips of Jack's ears and the back of his neck.

When Jack is done, they eat. It's good food, his favorite, but he can't stop looking at Jack, can't stop thinking about kissing him. His eating might turn a little sensual, or at least as sensual as he can possibly get it, but he's turned on okay? He apparently has a thing for people who bother to put effort into wooing him.

Jack keeps sneaking glances his way, and ducking his head down when the sees the look on Bitty’s face.

When Bitty finally finishes eating, he pops each finger into his mouth individually, sucking the marinara sauce he’d made sure ended up there off. Then he pulls out his phone and checks the time.

“Fireworks won’t be startin’ for another thirty minutes darlin’,” he says, tucking his phone into his back pocket, “why don’t we make a few of our own in the meantime?”

Jack laughs a little at that, and all right, Bitty can admit that was kind of cheesy. He huffs out a laugh of his own, but it’s released as he’s pinning Jack to the side of the truck bed, mouth hovering over his.

Jack leans the rest of the way in, sealing their lips into a kiss. Bitty smooths his hand up Jack’s arms, reciprocating enthusiastically.

When Jack slides his tongue into the seam of his lips he lets his hand make its way to the back of Jack’s neck, rubbing his fingers through the hair at his nape.

Jack lets out a breathy little sound into the kiss that has Bitty feeling tingly all over, then breaks the kiss.

“You’re relentless with that one.”

“What,” Bitty replies innocently, “you don’t like it?”

Bitty feels a jolt of nervousness at his next idea, but he does it anyways, just to see how Jack will react.

“Would you rather,” he says, trailing his hand, blunt fingernails scratching lightly against the skin of Jack’s neck, over to gently hold the front now, in a loose grip, “I do this?”

The last part comes out barely a whisper. His assessing glance reveals that, yeah, Jack is into that.

He smiles, allowing his grip to become a little tighter, from barely there to noticable. He’s not constricting Jack’s breathing, or even his blood flow. Just… holding.

Jack shudders, and Bitty moves the hand back to cup the back of his head again, leaning in to continue their kiss.

He’d always assumed Jack would be the one to take control, he’s older, more experienced, bigger. All the porn that Bitty has watched certainly seems to point to that being the case.

Bitty wouldn’t have minded that, in fact, he suspects he would thoroughly enjoy that from time to time. But this feels good, feels right.

And well, his mamma always did tell him to do what felt right.

He cups Jack’s jaw, biting down on his lower lip, letting his pinky trail down to brush against his neck at the same time.

Jack makes another one of those glorious sounds, and Bitty slides on to Jack’s lap, feeling the hardness there, warm and insistent.

He bites back a smile and presses his reciprocation against him, relishing in the sound he makes.

He grinds into him, thanking Beyoncé for giving him music to shake his hips to on an often enough occasion that the move comes out smooth and sinuous.

Jack presses his hands harder into Bitty’s hips at that, and they’re so big, he just wants them all over his body.

He trails kisses down Jack’s neck, careful not to leave any marks, feeling Jack’s hand flutter against his hip.

“F-fuck Bitty.”

When he trails his way down to his collarbone he allows himself to suck a bruise into the skin there, loving the surprised little shudder it gets him.

“I can’t wait until we’re in Providence,” he murmurs, kissing his collarbone again, “so I can mark you right up wherever I want.”

He drags his tongue up Jack’s neck, and he really shudders at that, gasping and pushing his hand up under Bitty’s shirt.

“Off,” he demands, “take it off.”

Bitty laughs and peels his shirt up over his head, nipples peaking in the cool night air.

“Fuck,” Jack says, eyes trailing over his body, “you’re so gorgeous Bits.”

Now it’s Bitty’s turn to blush, biting his lip under the weight of Jack’s gaze.

“Language.” He chirps teasingly.

“Gorgeous.” Jack repeats, eyes sparkling with mirth.

“Oh hush.” Bitty replies, smacking his shoulder lightly, even as he feels the throb in his pants grows more insistent.

“Make me.” Jack says, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.

Bitty blinks for a moment, then takes a handful of Jack’s hair in his hand, a firm grip without pushing or pulling. He leans down next to Jack’s ear.

“I have more than one idea how to do that, if you’d be so kind as to go along with them.”

Then he rolls his hips into Jack’s, who lets his head roll back and moans obscenely into the night air.

“Yes,” he says, straightening up after a moment, “yeah just. Sit up against the back window, and maybe hand me that pillow, eh?”

He points to a flat rectangular pillow in the same direction Bitty’s meant to go. He grabs it on his way to the window, along with a much fluffier one that he uses to prop himself up. Jack’s pillow is squishy, memory foam. He hands it to him and he smiles, laying it down between Bitty’s spread legs.

“Thank you.” He says, kissing him. His hands make their way down to Bitty’s fly, popping the button open smoothly.

Bitty barely stops his hips from rolling up into the fleeting touch. Then Jack is pulling down his zipper and, oh this is so much better. He is so glad he decided to wear a pair of boxer briefs with an opening in the front, because Jack just pulls his dick right out, hand firm around the base.

Bitty hisses through his teeth at the cold air and Jack looks up at him in amusement.

“Want me to kiss it better?”

Bitty tips his head back in a laugh, and it hits the window with a soft thud. The sound quickly transforms into a gasp, and then a moan as he feels Jack doing just that.

When he looks down Jack is on his belly, chest resting on the pillow, propped up on his forearm.

He’s lucky Jack does so many push ups, because otherwise that wouldn’t be a very sustainable position. He wonders who does more, Jack or Kent? Jack is like a robot, but Kent spends most of his free time training...

He looks down, sees Jack’s head bobbing on his cock, and pushes all thoughts of the two of them sweating in the gym together away.

He tangles his hand up in Jack’s hair, and feels his movements stutter before starting up again with a gusto.

“You look so good for me baby.” Bitty murmurs. “Love you like this, wish I could see it better. I wanna know exactly what you look like when you’re taking my cock so good.”

Jack moans around him, taking him as deep as he can before holding him there a bit, in his throat.

Bitty swears.

“Baby you’re so good, god I love that mouth of yours.”

Jack pulls off with a gasp, panting a little before enthusiastically taking him down again. Bitty feels like he might black out at any moment, it’s so good.

“I wanna— unh—“ he grunts as Jack swallows around him “—honey, can I pull your hair, wanna make you take it just the way I like—“

Jack pulls up hurriedly, making this obscene slurping noise as he goes. Even in the poor lighting Bitty can see the string of spit that connects them, catches the glint of want in Jack’s eyes.

“Yes,” Jack says, “yes please.”

Bitty grabs his hair and on an impulse tugs his head back just to see the line of his throat exposed. It earns him this choked off whimper that is honestly so good he can hardly stand it.

He guides Jack’s head back to his cock, but before he actually makes contact he remembers himself.

“Tap out on my thigh if you need to honey.”

Jack nods enthusiastically, so Bitty gives him what they both want. He’s gentle, pushes Jack down until he can’t go any further with an aching slowness, and then holds him there. Holds him down until he can feel him start to squirm just a little, then he pulls him up off his dick and lets him breathe a little.

Then he pushes Jack’s mouth onto the head of his cock and says “suck.”

It’s incredibly rude of him, but Jack seems to enjoy it, happily complying with an enthusiasm that is quite frankly delightful.

Bitty shudders out a breathy “good boy.”

He sees Jack’s shoulders still, feels his nails dig into his thigh, and honestly he would have apologized right then if he hadn’t also seen him grind his hip into the pillow.

“You like that baby?” Bitty purrs. “You like to be a good boy for me?”

Jack pulls up and off with a wet pop, resting his head against Bitty’s thigh.

“Fuck, Bitty.”

“That’s the idea darlin’,” Bitty says, in this whispy sigh of a voice he doesn’t recognize, “cmon now, I’m gettin’ close.”

Bitty pushes his head back a little, does not need to exert much pressure, because Jack is just going already, taking Bitty’s cock as far down as he can. Bitty feels his moan rip out of him more than heard it, wants so desperately to fuck up into Jack’s mouth, but he’s not rude.

So he holds back, just panting and stroking Jack’s head and murmuring “good boy, so good.” Over and over till he comes, bright and blinding behind his squeezed shut eyelids.

He shakes through it for a few seconds, shuddering into the plateau.

When he opens his eyes he realizes the brightness has more to do with the fact that the fireworks have started than anything. He laughs at the perfect timing.

Then he shudders, because Jack is still down there. He’s just kitten licking and holding the base of his cock. But he’s too overly sensitive at the moment for anything of the sort, so he gently pushes Jack off.

“The fireworks have started baby, come up here so I can get you off and we can watch them.”

Instead of complying, Jack just pants into the crook of his thigh, and Bitty suspects if his jeans were actually off at the moment, the breath on his bare skin would be doing things to him.

When Jack looks up, it’s with a somewhat sheepish expression. The realization hits Bitty like a truck.

“I missed it didn’t I?” He pouts.

Jack just blushes and averts his eyes, obviously embarrassed at having come without even being touched.

“No, no,” Bitty reassures, “that’s amazing, you’re so amazing for me honey, I just wish I noticed. You got me in such a tizzy I didn’t even notice the fireworks goin’ off. Let alone you, being all quiet and such.”

He opens his arms invitingly.

“Come here.”

Jack tucks him in and zips him up first, which is a good idea. Then he crawls his way up into Bitty’s arms and settles in there, resting his head against his chest.

It’s not the most comfortable, their size difference is not working in Bitty’s favor at the moment, but he’s happy. Jack is warm against him, and the fireworks glitter in the sky, and there’s this sense of contentment suffusing itself all through him.

He’s so happy, can’t believe this is real, that he can have this.

After a moment, Bitty murmurs in Jack’s ear.

“Next time, I am going to take my time with you mister Zimmermann.”

Jack shudders, and it could be from what he said, or how he said it, or the cool night air, or his breath on his neck. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is he loves it.

“...happy Fourth of July.” Jack replies.

Bitty laughs.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bitty and Jack are at the fair in Georgia and they kiss and some teenage asshole calls them a slur and mildly ruins their date :( 
> 
> They bounce back pretty quick and nothing further happens though, just general contemplation about homophobia in the south.


	10. Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is kinda short, but the next one is shaping up to be pretty long, so no double chapters this time, sorry :p Next chapter is Kent POV, and will be posted next weekend, so stay tuned!

“Next time I’m going to take my time with you Zimms.”

Sometimes it scares him how similar those two are.

It makes him feel shitty about himself, wondering if he’s just subconsciously using Bitty as a replacement for Kent.

But-- no-- Bitty is an entirely separate person. Yeah, he's blond, and sassy, and he plays hockey, but he also bakes and rants and loves Beyoncé more than Jack can comprehend.

Kent is more of a Britney guy.

He’s just drawing parallels because he still isn't over Kent. Which he can admit to himself, as it is painfully true.

He feels like he should be, by now. But he isn't. It’s been six years, and he has Bitty now and he really really should be over Kent. But he's just. Not.

He thinks he's doing a good job keeping it under wraps, but he still avoids talking about Kent because, for one thing, it hurts, and for another, Bitty is scarily perceptive sometimes. Sometimes he’ll just look at Jack with this knowing expression, like he can see right into the core of him. Like he knows exactly what he’s thinking.

Like when he’d touched his neck. Then that expression had made him feel like burning up inside, like Bitty knew just exactly how that had made him felt, like he was mapping out where all his buttons were so he could find them later and push until he buckled.

He hadn't expected Bitty to be so good at taking him apart like that. But he has this intense kind of laser focus that just makes it impossible to think, makes him feel pinned in place like a bug. Like he can't even move, even though nothing is physically restraining him.

Yeah, sex with Kent had been good, but they had also both been sixteen, unsure and awkward. He had expected it to be like that with Bitty too, hell, he's pretty sure even Bitty had expected it to be like that. After all, Bitty had told him that he’d never really gotten past clumsy hand jobs.

He'd never even had a boyfriend before, which Jack understands a little better now after the incident at the fair. He’d never realized that a large part of Bitty’s inexperience was due to fear. Unfortunately justified fear.

Jack has only ever lived in liberal areas, always been a big guy. He's worried about what coming out might do to his career, but he's never really thought about the other problems that might arise.

Bitty was a petite gay kid in the south. He's never really talked about it before, but he’s alluded to past bullying. Because even if he wasn't out, kids pick up on that shit sometimes.

He can't help but picture young Bitty, who didn't have many friends, or at least none that mattered enough to keep in touch after graduation. Who had this secret that he was getting crushed under, counting down the days till graduation.

It just makes him wish he could travel back in time to when Bitty was in high school, tell him everything is going to turn out great, be there for him when he needed it.

He also kind of wants to smother himself with his pillow until he passes out so he can actually go to sleep.

But he’s irrevocably worked up now. Fuming with frustration at his inability to protect past Bitty, at the fact that Bitty had seemed so practiced at taking slurs slung at him by idiotic teenagers in stride.

He hadn’t wanted to ruin the date further by picking a fight and getting kicked out of the fair, but at the same time, he knows those kids are still out there thinking shit like that is ok. And Jack is intimidating ok? He's a big guy, he probably wouldn't even have had to physically fight the kids to scare them.

He knows he’s just frustrated over something he can't help, digging himself into an ineffectual hole that's just going to make it harder to go to sleep.

He sighs and shoves himself up out of bed, trundling downstairs for a glass of water.

When he closes the cabinet after retrieving a glass for his water, Bitty’s mom is suddenly standing there, scrutinizing him. He starts so hard he almost drops the glass. In fact, he really should have. It was on the tip of his fingers about to tumble to the ground, and she just looked at it and it… righted itself.

She looks at him challengingly, and he shakes it off as a trick of the light.

“Hey there Mrs.Bittle,” he says sheepishly, “you really gave me a start there, eh?”

She seems surprised, and he feels like there's something he missed. Some topic of conversation she thought they should be on that they weren't. She’s just silently scrutinizing him in a way that is frankly uncomfortable.

Jack nervously slings a thumb over his shoulder towards the fridge.

“I’m just down here getting a glass of water. Can't sleep.”

He rubs the back of his neck at the odd direction this mid-night encounter is barreling down.

“What… What brings you down here?”

He cringes at that. It's her kitchen, she can come down to it whenever she damn well pleases. He’s just kind of dying a little under her unflinching gaze. He’s really not used to being the chatty one in any situation, but this is decidedly not a comfortable silence.

She looks at him for another beat, then sighs. He's not sure what she sees there, but she doesn't seem angry so that's good at least.

“Can I…?” She asks, gesturing towards him.

“Sure,” he responds automatically, wondering what the hell she’s going to do.

She closes her eyes in apparent concentration, moving her hands around him in a vaguely assessing manner. He still has no clue what she's doing, but she's not touching him or anything so he just lets her continue without complaint.

Her hands fall to her side, and he breathes out. He hadn't even noticed he was holding his breath.

“Did you know,” She asks conversationally, “that when someone performs a spell, or has one performed on them, it essentially activates their magical signature? It gives off an aura, easily detectable by practiced magic users at first glance. After further inspection, one can distinguish between someone who has performed magic and someone who has had it performed on them. You,” she says, looking him in the eyes with a serious expression, “have performed it.”

There's a silence stretching between them. Jack hasn't picked up the spell book in so long, barely even thought about it outside of the painful shit he’s had to put up with because of it. But she can sense it on him regardless, apparently. He hadn’t thought… He’d decided never to do any spellwork again after what happened to Kent. His regret is too strong.

Mrs.Bittle breaks the silence first.

“My son has had it performed on him.”

Jack's head whips back up. “What?”

She squints at Jack.

“The kind of magic I specialize in is assessing Jack, if you lie to me I’ll know. Did you do spellwork on my son?”

“No!” Jack says, too loudly, then again, softer. “No. I haven't... Not in almost seven years. I haven't done a spell on anything other than some peonies. Never a human.”

She seems to accept that, relaxing exponentially.

“Okay,” she accepts, “I believe you.”

Jack lets out a sigh of relief.

She laughs a bit sheepishly.

“I’m sorry to have accosted you like this,” she says, “but magic isn’t very common. It’s a bit of a personal goal of mine, to try to find whoever cast the spell on him and ask them what it is.”

“You don’t know?” Jack can’t help but ask, curiosity overtaking him momentarily.

“I don’t have the slightest inkling,” she whines, “it’s just driving me bonkers! I know it was a powerful spell, not malicious, and activated recently. Which are things that take years of practice to discern in themselves. But actually finding the spell itself is pretty much impossible without both caster and subject willingly submitting to inspection.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she says.

The sound of the refrigerator drones on in his ears uncontested for a minute as they stare at each other, searching for words. She winces and speaks again.

“So how did you get in to magic? You said you haven’t done any in seven years… but you seem kind of young for that.”

He can tell it’s partially said to break the awkward silence, but there’s also genuine curiosity there. He clears his throat.

“It was after my mémé passed away. We were clearing out her house and there was this book… there was something about it…”

“It called to you?”

“...yeah. I guess so.”

“Hmm.” She waves her hands in an assessing manner again. “Yes. I can tell you’ve got an affinity for the same branch of magic i’ve been specializing in. But I'm not gonna lie. It’s a bit weak.” She shrugs. “Must be your granny was a powerful caster or some such, that kind of thing tends to seep into the magical items of the caster.”

Jack hums in acknowledgement. He doesn't really care that his affinity is weak. He doesn't want anything to do with magic anymore.

Mrs.Bittle yawns.

“Well I best be getting to bed,” she gives him a watery smile, “thanks for humoring me honey.”

Then she’s gone. Leaving Jack with a sinking feeling in the pit of his gut and an empty glass.

He sighs and goes to fill the glass with water. After the first sip he realizes just how parched he was and drains and refills it, heading back upstairs. In the hallway he pauses between the door to Bitty’s room and the guest room.

His brain is buzzing with an overwhelming litany of thoughts and feelings. Reactions to his conversation and the vestiges of his earlier frustrations about young Bitty.

He doesn't want to disturb Bitty, doesn't want to make him worry about getting him out of the room before his parents realize. But he needs something to quell the frantic pace of his thoughts, and he knows being around Bitty, preferably with physical contact, will help.

He does his best to open the door silently, but something about the shift in the air or the change in lighting causes Bitty to stir into awareness.

He mumbles something quietly that Jack doesn't catch, and he closes the door behind him before he disturbs his rest too much. It's darker in Bitty's room without the light from the hall coming in. His blinds are closed, but those in the hall’s windows are not.

Jack carefully makes his way over to Bitty's bed, thankfully without tripping too much.

“Wh’d izzit?” Bitty mumbles, half into his pillow.

“Can't sleep,” Jack responds in a whisper, “let me in?”

Bitty rolls over obligingly, but doesn't lift the covers. Jack chuckles lightly to himself and lifts them to crawl underneath.

“Ough,” Bitty says, kicking the comforter down until it’s only covering his shins and burrowing into Jack’s open arms, “y’r like a furn’ce. Too hot fr’ this.”

It’s mostly mumbled into Jack's chest though, so his complaints must not be too strong.

“Wht’s wrong baby?” He asks, petting through Jack’s chest hair sleepily.

“Nothing really,” Jack says, voice still low, “just need to be around you.”

“Thas’ nice honey,” Bitty says, and then quite obviously passes out, using Jack as a pillow.

Jack huffs a laugh, and settles back to sleep, feeling infinitely better now with Bitty’s comforting weight pressed up against him.

 


	11. Kent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter skips back in time a little to get things from Kent’s POV, but I tried to be as clear as possible about the timeline for major scenes so there shouldn’t be too much confusion. Just to be clear though, the chapter begins on the day after epikegster from Kent’s POV and progresses from there for about 8 or 9 months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So,,, uh I technically got it out on Sunday,,, in some time zones. Here's your update lol, happy Kent as promised! Let's see if that lasts! :)

Things go well after Bitty messages Kent to apologize for eavesdropping. Kent mostly plays hockey, but he starts committing himself to going out and meeting more people than just in clubs. When he’s not sleeping he’s playing hockey, training, wandering, Skyping Anne or texting Bitty.

The wandering could be qualified as tourism if it had more purpose, but he usually just walks off whenever he needs some air. He totally forgets to charge his phone and gets lost on a few occasions without google to take him home, to the point where he’s developing a concerningly large collection of spare charging cables, but mostly it’s nice.

It’s also about as proactive as he can get when all he has to go on for finding the elusive third is a feeling.

The wandering sort of helps him realize that he has a little bit of a social media problem. He never really has any meaningful interactions on any platforms, just posts about his day and responds to fans, but he still spends way too much time just screwing around. Besides, a PR person could just make his posts and responses for him.

Yeah, sometimes it is nice to see stuff about other people’s days, and it is nice to see what Anne or Bitty are up to, but they can just text.

That much becomes evident during a conversation with Bitty.

Bitty: alright I know I already tweeted about this  
Bitty: but I cannot believe the tomfoolery that goes on in this house!  
Bitty: I’m trying to uphold a certain standard of living, but Shitty won’t let me get rid of this couch  
Bitty: you’ve seen it, you know exactly which biohazard I’m referring to  
Bitty: it’s like all my nana’s worst nightmares rolled into one and it’s presence is DISRESPECTFUL  
Kent: do you plan on inviting your nana over to the Haus?  
Bitty: no, but if I wanted to I couldn’t  
Bitty: she’d drop dead before she even got past the threshold  
Bitty: hell, I feel like I’m fixin to have a heart attack every time I step through the door  
Bitty: there’s only so much fresh baking can do to cover the smell of young men athletes  
Bitty: only so much baking I can do in a day  
Kent: you’re going to have to start texting me all these updates directly actually  
Kent: I’m thinking about deleting Twitter off my phone  
Kent: ...and my Instagram  
Kent: and Facebook, though nobody really uses that anymore anyways  
Kent: Snapchat I might keep  
Kent: ;)  
Bitty: don’t you winky face me mister  
Bitty: I never use Snapchat  
Bitty: I guess you’re right, I’ll have to text you everything direct  
Bitty: why are you doing it, if I may ask?  
Kent: I guess I just realized I was spending all my time on hockey or social media  
Kent: hockey is my job, so I’m not quitting that  
Kent: but idk  
Kent: I have stuff I’ve been avoiding  
Kent: I think maybe if I cut out the distractions in my life it’ll help me get my shit together  
Bitty: that sounds… surprisingly healthy actually  
Kent: ouch  
Bitty: no no I don’t mean it like that  
Bitty: well maybe a little like that  
Bitty: I’ve never really thought of social media as a distraction because I personally get so much positive interaction from it  
Bitty: which was especially important to me in high school, but still helps nowadays  
Bitty: but it’s good to be able to recognize if it’s having a negative impact on you?  
Bitty: or something like that  
Bitty: gosh I don’t know  
Kent: no I get where you’re coming from  
Kent: it’s cool if you’ve been able to keep most of your interactions positive  
Kent: personally I’ve barely avoided some truly nasty arguments on  
Kent: so many occasions  
Kent: there’s a lot of idiots out there  
Kent: and since I’m like  
Kent: lowkey famous  
Kent: I have to avoid arguing with them  
Kent: even when I really want to  
Kent: so I think this will probably be good for my blood pressure too  
Bitty: yeah I’ve been able to mostly avoid the unsavory parts of the internet  
Bitty: but there have definitely been a few internet tussles on my part  
Bitty: so I know what you mean

After that Kent talks to the manager about putting someone else in charge of his social media, and that had pretty much been that. Whenever he finds himself reaching for his phone to make a status update or scroll through his feed he just puts on a podcast and goes outside instead. Sometimes he runs, sometimes he just walks; takes in his surroundings and tries to be as aware as possible.

He doesn’t get the feeling of certainty again, but he does find some good local food places he’s never really paid attention to, and he starts taking up photography. Just on his phone, nothing fancy, but he always sends Bitty pictures of cats he sees on his walks.

It kind of devolves into an argument about which is the better pet.

Kent: dogs poop on the sidewalk and then YOU HAVE TO PICK IT UP  
Kent: like,  
Kent: the only thing shielding your hand from poop is a plastic bag  
Bitty: because it’s so much better to have an animal that just poops inside your house??  
Bitty: in a box of special sand you have to buy, no less!  
Kent: yes, it is!!

So now he makes sure to get as many cat pictures as possible throughout his day. Bitty starts sending him dog pictures in return, but most of them are obviously from the internet. Which makes sense, there aren’t a whole lot of dogs on college campuses. Though Kent has to admit, Bitty does send him some pretty quality pictures of the service dog that comes to his economics lecture.

He’s walking around after an away game in Washington when he sees someone walking their cat on a leash, and the ensuing mad scramble for his phone causes him to drop it on the floor and crack the screen, even with his massive cover and reinforced screen.

He huffs and checks that it still works, and once he sees that it does he looks both ways before crossing the street to chase after the owner.

It’s a fairly androgynous person who introduces themselves as Miles and their cat as Big Chungus. Which delights Kent more than he can begin to explain.

Chungus is incredibly disgruntled, and obviously hates the harness, but he’s walking without too much protest.

“Can’t complain,” Miles says, “first time I took him out he refused to move. I had to drag him a block before he started walking. Let me tell you. So many weird looks.”

“No offense,” Kent says, “but why do you walk him? He lowkey looks like he hates it.”

“Oh he fully does. But he’s kinda chubby and the vet told me to do it so here I am. I’m not gonna lie, it’s also a great ice breaker.”

Miles gestures in between the two of them, and Kent concedes the point.

“So, do you want to pet him?”

“Oh absolutely,” Kent smiles, already bending down to let Chungus sniff his hand, “can I take some pictures too?”

“Sure,” Miles shrugs, “go for it.”

He snaps a few shots that he thinks truly encapsulate the struggle of a cat on a leash named Chungus, and then reviews them before snickering and sending them to Bitty.

Bitty responds quickly.

Kent: Chungus.jpg  
Kent: saw this beautiful baby on my walk today.  
Bitty: excuse me  
Bitty: what on EARTH is that file name

Kent laughs and takes a moment to swap numbers with Miles. They may not be his soulmate, but they’re, like, his soulmate, so he needs a way to get more cat pics.

After saying his goodbyes he heads to the park down the street. He sits on one of the swings and gently pushes himself back and forth while he types out a response. A nearby mom gives him a mildly scandalized look, but hey, it’s a public park.

Kent: it’s Chungus :)  
Bitty: I SAW that  
Bitty: I suppose a better question would be why??  
Kent: it’s the cat’s name lol  
Kent: Chungus  
Bitty: that poor creature  
Bitty: that’s bordering on animal abuse  
Kent: lolll he doesn’t care, he’s a cat  
Bitty: he’s a cat named CHUNGUS  
Bitty: I feel like that could transcend language barriers as an affront to naming conventions that even cats can understand  
Kent: conventions suck anyways  
Bitty: I can’t argue with that  
Bitty: but I stand by the fact that Chungus is the worst cat name EVER  
Kent: fair enough lol

——

After the Stanley cup, which the Aces decidedly do not win this year, Kent decides, fuck it; it’s the off season. If a seventh of the population is in China that’s where he’ll go.

He buys the tickets the day after the Aces lose to their fourth game to the Sharks, and their place in the finals. He does the mandatory team consolation trip to the nearest bar, but after his last mishap he’s been sticking to water, so he mostly just watches everyone else get drunk.

Kent: I’m not going to be able to answer any texts from u tomorrow, I’m going to China  
Itty Bitty: oh wow! That’s quite a flight, may I ask why you’re visiting?  
Itty Bitty: because I have it on good authority that some of the shrines are just downright beautiful if you intend on doing tourist things  
Kent: yeah I’m going for touristy things + I’ve gotta get out there more  
Kent: never know what you’re missing  
Kent: also who's the authority?  
Kent: is it Lardo?  
Itty Bitty: yes, actually  
Itty Bitty: how did you know?  
Kent: Anne keeps relaying advice from her on places to visit  
Kent: Apparently Lardo has been to five out of seven continents  
Itty Bitty: oh I know, she says she plans to visit all seven before she turns 30  
Kent: honestly I think Anne is going to whisk her away to Antarctica any day now  
Kent: she keeps talking about starting a new creative project  
Kent: she wants to do photo shoots in oppressive environments  
Kent: but like  
Kent: America’s oppressive enough amirite?  
Itty Bitty: lord, you sound like Shitty  
Itty Bitty: you're not wrong but you are making me picture you with his mustache  
Kent: ….  
Kent: is it sexy?  
Itty Bitty: HUSH  
——

He lands in Beijing not two days later, an itinerary prepared with a list of all the highest population cities in China, and the various must see attractions they contain. He begins in the metropolitan area, conscious of the fact that his blond hair and obvious inability to speak any form of Chinese has him sticking out like a sore thumb.

But he prepared the best he could, memorizing the pronunciation of choice phrases in Mandarin to help him communicate with taxi drivers and cashiers.

Travelling through downtown Beijing is nerve wracking and claustrophobic, but he lives in Las Vegas, and he’s been to the strip enough that it’s not terrible. He has fun, which is mainly thanks to his extraordinarily out of character display of foresight. He brought two extra power packs and pre planned all the places he wanted to visit. The rest is up to google maps. He bumps shoulders with plenty of passerby, but that comforting, dreaded certainty never arises.

So he sees some new things, walks the Great Wall of China, discovers just how inauthentic Panda Express is, manages to only have three awkwardly mistranslated conversations, and moves on.

Next is Shanghai, which is smaller, but still contains far more people than Beijing. He visits The Bund and Yu Garden, both of which he is sure to take plenty of pictures in. He sends the best ones to Anne, who chirps him for the shitty angles, but swears she appreciates them nonetheless.

He spends time downtown there as well, but he mostly just wanders while keeping half his mind on where he is and where he’s been so he doesn’t get lost, popping in to shops that seem interesting, getting food when he gets hungry, and then heading to his hotel for the night.

He spends most of the next morning wandering downtown as well, and then hops on a train to Hangzhou around noon. He’s incredibly impressed by the bullet train, which only takes an hour. When he arrives, he heads to West Lake, takes some photos, and hails a taxi to head downtown for a little exploration.

Still no feeling, but it is surprisingly peaceful, once he gets over the initial fear of being in an unfamiliar place. He may be surrounded by people, but they all have their own things going on so he’s basically alone.

He even manages to find some stray cats to snap pictures of for Bitty. In back alleys, waiting patiently in storefronts, even one sunning itself on the sidewalk. Bitty is sure to chirp him for sending more pictures of cats than actual attractions, but Kent swears they’re just as important.

The next morning he heads to Lingyin temple for some more tourism and blurry pictures for Anne to critique. Then it’s to the three pools mirroring the moon for some pictures Anne dubs “almost half decent.” Finally he heads back downtown for some more wandering, which still yields no feeling.

He’s at the train station by about one am, it’s a red eye trip, but he booked a sleeper cart. The trip to Guangzhou by train takes six hours, so he figures he might as well spend them sleeping.

It’s about noon in Samwell, so when he messages Bitty a blurry picture of a cat in the train station he gets a pretty immediate reply and a chirp for being up so late. He promises to go to bed soon and Bitty relents, sending him a picture of his neighbor’s dog napping on their porch and bidding him a good night.

When he arrives in the morning he drops his things off at his hotel and heads straight out to the temple of the six banyan trees. It was one of Lardo’s recommendations. She hasn’t really been all around China, mostly just the areas that are closer to the border of Vietnam. Apparently her fraternal grandpa lives by the coast in Vietnam, up near the border, so she’s crossed over a few times after visiting him, but never strayed too far.

It’s really pretty out there, and he has Lardo’s number too at this point, sure to send these pictures in a group text between her and Anne. He accepts their chirping happily, and takes a taxi downtown. He spends three days in Guangzhou, seeing as it has the largest population of any city in China. But still, no feeling.

He hops on a bullet train to Chongqing on day three, another red eye, as the trip is supposed to take almost ten hours. As soon as he arrives, he drops his bags off and heads to Fengdu, an ancient ghost city. He sends Anne a few choice pictures of the greenery growing off the buildings and she commends his improvement. Though he’d really just gotten tired of sending her shitty pictures to make her laugh. It really is pretty here, and being so immersed in so many pretty places is starting to get him.

It’s calming. Soothing in a way that is almost a pale imitation of the certainty. Not the same really, he’s just… happy. Peaceful. He guesses it’s probably because he isn’t stressing about finding his soulmate but not actually doing anything for the first time in a while. He has a clear, substantial plan and he’s following it, and he’s getting to experience some great things along the way. He breathes in deeply, just to feel the air rush into his lungs. He’s been tense and he didn’t even realize it, it’s good to just let himself breathe once in a while.

He hits up another tourist attraction or two before heading downtown for a bit of wandering and then back to his hotel. The next day is also spent wandering mostly, but he isn’t even upset that he’s on city five out of six and he hasn’t found his soulmate. He’s been needing a vacation, needing a new experience, needing to relax. So he’ll just let himself have that.

He heads to the last city he’s visiting, Chengdu, with one goal in mind: meet some pandas. He called ahead and paid the requisite amount, so when he arrives in giant panda base, he has an extremely fucking important appointment to take a picture with a baby panda. He takes many, and even gets to hold it, which has him struggling to withhold a squeal because it is incredibly soft.

He texts the best selfie to Bitty, calling a truce on the dog versus cat war because the clear, unadulterated winner for best animal is the panda. Bitty concedes, and Kent is sure to text the PR person some selfies as well for his social media.

Though the panda was his primary reason for coming and he feels thoroughly satisfied at having met that goal, Chengdu’s population of 11 million is nothing at all to sneeze at, so he’s sure to take a trip downtown to wander.

No feeling overcomes him but giddiness at having held a baby panda, but he still goes to bed incredibly content that night.  
——-  
In late June, Anne calls him up and practically screams in his ear. Once he gets her to calm down, she manages to reveal that the reason she’s so elated is because of her engagement to Malek.

She never really struck him as the kind of person to be so excited over marriage, which just goes to show that he should pay more attention to her. They have been friends for a few years now, after all. She’s his best friend.

But when he abashedly points out that he wouldn’t have expected this excitement from her she doesn’t seem upset. In fact she agrees with him.

“I wouldn’t have thought so either, it’s just that we’ve been together for, like, four years now and I’m, you know, super in love with him? Mostly I’m just excited because I get to wear a huge gown. It’s going to be awesome.”

“Well I’m excited for you. I’m sure it’ll be great.”

He adjusts his phone in the cradle of his shoulder, ripping open one of the trainer approved frozen dinners and popping it in the microwave. Anne snorts directly in his ear.

“Yeah, no. Don’t act like you’re not going to be involved in this, you’re my maid of honor bitch.”

Kent laughs a little.

“I’m appropriately honored, but isn’t that title typically reserved for women?”

“Fuck societal standards,” Anne says, “I want you to be my maid of honor. Plan my bachelorettes and all that. You’re my best friend, I’m not going to make you stand on Malek’s side just because you’re a guy. You barely know him.”

Kent laughs again.

“You know I know him, like, biblically.”

“What does he do for a living?” Anne asks in a flat voice.

“...he’s an accountant?”

“No,” Anne replies, “well yeah, he does our taxes, but mostly no. He plays professional rugby.”

“What?” Kent asks, actually surprised. “Okay, so many questions. First of all, the US has a rugby team?”

“Yeah,” Anne replies, in a tone that implies what she really wanted to say was “duh.”

“Wait, wait. I distinctly remember you saying he went on a “business trip” a while ago.”

“Yeah, he had to play.”

Kent rubs his temples.

“That’s called an away game, Anne. He went to an away game.”

“Potato po-tah-to,” Anne says.

He can just picture the dismissive hand gesture.

“How is it you ended up dating two separate professional athletes when you know nothing about sports of any kind.”

“Four, actually,” Anne says, somewhat smugly, “and because I’m hot and a model.”

“I’d say point,” Kent concedes, “but that had nothing to do with how we met.”

“We met at the most exclusive club in New York, dumbass.”

“Fine, it has a little bit to do with how we met. But yeah, to answer your ten minute old question; I’ll be your maid of honor. I’ll plan you a bitchin bachelorettes too. I do live in Vegas after all.”

Anne groans.

“I forgot about that, please don’t make me a cliche Kent, it’s bad form.”  
——

Kent: guess who’s going to be maid of honor at Anne’s wedding  
Itty Bitty: what???  
Itty Bitty: I thought that was just women??  
Itty Bitty: wait  
Itty Bitty: I thought Anne was dating Lardo??  
Itty Bitty: my goodness  
Itty Bitty: that girl is going to be heartbroken!  
Itty Bitty: and I could have sworn she said they were dating  
Kent: they are  
Kent: she’s making Lardo a bridesmaid  
Kent: everyone is fully aware and cool with it don’t worry  
Itty Bitty: ???  
Kent: they’re polyamorous  
Kent: I don’t think Malek is dating Lardo too  
Kent: but I know he’s cool with it  
Kent: and Anne is pretty good about letting her partners know right off the bat  
Itty Bitty: oh right, you would know  
Itty Bitty: you used to date didn’t you?  
Kent: yeah  
Kent: she told me less than a day after I met her

He hesitates to send his next message. Bitty is gay, pretty openly so, so he knows he won’t have a problem with it. He also knows that he hasn’t exactly been subtle, when he talks about Jack he likely says things that make it clear enough to someone as perceptive as Bitty that he’s head over heels for the man. But he’s never said anything that explicitly makes it clear that he likes men as well.

With a career like his he doesn’t think he’ll ever get to admit it without being nervous. He’s been flirting enough anyways that he’s sure Bitty knows by now. Which is probably weird, flirting with the guy who’s in love with his ex. But it’s kind of a force of habit at this point? He’s naturally flirty.

Kent: I never dated Malek  
Kent: but I’m very familiar with him  
Kent: ;)  
Itty Bitty: don’t be crude  
Itty Bitty: I’m guessing this is your roundabout way of coming out to me?  
Itty Bitty: If so, I’m glad you trust me with this Kent <3

Kent smiles at his phone so widely it feels like his cheeks might crack. He knows the heart emoji is platonic, but not for the first time he wonders how things might be different if they weren’t both in love with Jack.  
——  
The day before his birthday he gets a text from Bitty about Jack. They usually don’t talk too much about him, it still kind of hurts a little. But it’s nice to get updates on him, even if he can’t be with him personally. He wonders idly if Bitty ever talks to Jack about him. If Jack feels the same way.

Itty Bitty: I mean this in the nicest way possible  
Itty Bitty: absolutely not shaming Jack for this  
Itty Bitty: but  
Itty Bitty: has his singing voice always been this bad???  
Itty Bitty: I’ve literally never heard it before today, and, dear lord I think that was for a reason  
Itty Bitty: I will defend Jack’s virtues to the end of the earth but he sings with the same relative grace and vocal control as a cat in heat  
Itty Bitty: and the song that somehow drove him to this point??  
Itty Bitty: was Kesha’s TickTock

And suddenly Kent is transported back to the gym in Jack’s house. How in awe he’d been the first time he’d been invited there. Awkwardly trying not to gape at all the equipment Jack’s dad had. Jack’s sheepish tour. How long it had taken Jack to open up enough to Kent to sing in front of him. The first time he had, with the smell of sweat in the air and Kesha’s singing getting drowned out by an uncharacteristic burst of song from Jack.

He had faltered mid lift at the sound, and Jack had had to grab the bar to help support it’s weight.

“Woah there, what was that all about?”

Kent had just lain there for a moment, heart pounding from nearly dropping a solid hundred pounds on himself. Then giggles had bubbled up through his throat, uncontrollably bursting out.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he had said in the face of Jack’s obvious confusion, “it’s just, your singing is so bad.”

Jack had made a sound of protest in his throat, an attempt to fall into the normal rhythm of their chirping. But Kent knew him well enough to be able to identify the genuine hurt in his eyes, he just did the first thing he could think of to fix it.

He grabbed Jack’s hand where it was still on the bar, and looked up at him from where he was still horizontal on the bench, grinning from the earlier mirth.

“It’s okay,” he said, “I like it.”

Jack had called him an idiot, but it was true. He loved Jack’s shitty singing. Which probably should have been a sign to Jack that he was already a little gone on him.

Jack didn’t sing often, but every now and again, if the mood struck and Kesha was playing, Kent would get to hear it again.

The memories are bittersweet, it’s strange for him to remember just how happy he had been as a teenager, with Jack.

He shakes the memories off and finally answers Bitty’s texts.

Kent: sorry haha, I kind of trained him to like that song  
Kent: in my defense it’s a great pump up song for workouts  
Kent: we used to work out together pretty much every day in juniors  
Kent: and I was always in charge of the pump up songs  
Kent: he did the cooldowns  
Kent: and yes, his singing has always been that bad /:

It’s honestly kind of nice to talk to someone about Jack who’s just as badly in love with him. Neither of them has explicitly addressed this fact. Kent doesn’t want to out Jack to his friend, that would be a dick move.

But he decides that if Jack tells Bitty, it’s something they can talk about.

Which is kind of crazy, given the fact that Bitty is technically his competition. And, as far as competitions go, Bitty is clearly winning by quite a bit.

For one thing, he actually has Jack’s phone number. Or any method of contacting him. He spends time with him on a regular basis, and going off what he had seen at the party, Jack definitely has a thing for him.

It actually seems kind of inevitable, that they’ll get together. Which he is resolutely just not going to think about. He’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.

But as he thinks about it he realizes it’s summer, Jack and Bitty aren’t in school right now. In fact, Jack graduated.

Kent: so I take it you guys are hanging out over break.  
Itty Bitty: oh!  
Itty Bitty: yeah, I forgot to tell you!  
Itty Bitty: Jack came out to visit me in Georgia, he’s staying with me and my parents for the fourth of July weekend.

That seems couple-y. Like a couple thing to do. He almost asks, thumbs hovering over the screen. Almost types the words “so are you dating or something?”

He decides against it though, backspacing away the first few words. Bitty would tell him if they got together, he’s practically a ball of excitement, always bursting at the seams. He’d never be able to keep something that big in. Though he wonders if they’re on the way to getting together now. Wonders if the weekend will turn from hot summer nights in too little clothing and lingering gazes in the hallways to something else. If one of them will reach out and touch the other’s bare skin, maybe grab his wrist and pull him into his room, run his tongue down his exposed chest.

Jack had always been so good with his tongue, he wonders if Bitty will be reaping those skills soon. The buzz of his phone pulls him out of his all too vivid imaginings and he flushes straight to the tip of his ears, readjusting in his seat to account for the interested throbbing.

Itty Bitty: speaking of which, happy almost birthday!  
Itty Bitty: I’ll text you again tomorrow, but I figured I’d say it now too, since it came up.  
Itty Bitty: I’ll be getting you your present tomorrow :D  
Kent: you didn’t have to  
Itty Bitty: I already did!  
Itty Bitty: don’t worry, I wanted to!  
Itty Bitty: don’t get your hopes up though, it’s nothing too fancy  
Kent: honestly I wasn’t expecting anything at all  
Kent: so whatever it is, I’ll appreciate it

It’s the truth, he doesn’t really get a lot of presents on his birthday, and there’s not a lot he can’t buy for himself anyways, so it’s more the sentiment that matters. He’s actually just happy Bitty thought of him, that he remembered at all.

——-

When he wakes up on his birthday, he sends Bitty all the Fourth of July cat pictures he’d found on google and saved up. Not too long afterwards, Bitty sends back some America themed dogs in reply, along with a golden retriever in a birthday hat and plenty of birthday emojis.

Itty Bitty: give me a second to send you your present

He gets a file over text, it’s an e-book. A guide for caring for cats. He snorts out a laugh. Then his phone buzzes again with a link. He opens it to see listings of cats in the local shelter. A few more links get sent, for specific cats.

Itty Bitty: I know you’ve been saying you shouldn’t have a cat but

Another link gets sent through, for a local cat sitting company.

Itty Bitty: according to the reviews, they seem very reliable  
Itty Bitty: and if you decide not to, I sent a video game to your steam account  
Itty Bitty: you can adopt a cat in the game! Almost as good as the real thing, I’m sure

Kent is genuinely, deeply touched. This is one of the most thoughtful presents he’s ever received.

He checks the link that Bitty sent him to a specific kitten. A yet unnamed Maine Coone. It’s kind of perfect.

Itty Bitty: I was thinking maybe if you got one of the unnamed kittens, or decide to just play the game you could name it something silly  
Itty Bitty: I know you like dramatic irony  
Itty Bitty: and the press is always calling you vain so  
Itty Bitty: I was thinking you could name it Kit Purrson or something

Okay, it’s absolutely perfect. The amount of forethought that must have gone into this. He’s actually tearing up a little. He feels a little pathetic, but he’s just so happy that someone cares enough to get him something so thoughtful.

Yeah, he thinks he’s ready for a cat again. He’s learned from his previous mistakes. If he can keep his house standing by avoiding the stovetop for years, he can keep his windows closed. He can keep his cat indoors, he can do this. It’s actually even early enough in the day that he can head over to the shelter right now and pick the cat up.

He turns his phone on do not disturb mode before heading in to his car so he isn’t tempted to text and drive. Then he sets the navigation to take him to the shelter and heads out.

It’s about a fifteen minute drive, and he’s buzzing with excitement the entire time. He practically careens out of his car and directly into the front desk, startling the poor clerk half out of her wits.

“I’m here about a cat,” he says.

“You’re Kent Parson,” she gapes.

“Yes,” he responds, “we can get a picture and autograph later if you want. I need this cat.”

Then he pulls up a picture of the cat on his phone, frantically pointing.

“This cat in particular.”

“You seem much more composed in interviews,” she says, standing up to lead him to the cat kennels, “so are you thinking of adopting?”

“Yeah,” he says, “my friend sent me a link to that cat and gave me an awesome name idea, so I think I’m ready to commit now.”

“Alright,” She says, chuckling as he calms down from his previous bouncy state, “well here she is.”

She opens a cage, scooping the kitten out.

“Do you want to play with her?” She jerks her head in the direction of a pen enclosure that’s obviously meant to contain patrons playing with their potential pets.

“You should probably make sure she’s the right temperament and all, don’t want you returning her.” She gives him a stern look then, all seriousness.

“Honestly, no matter what her temperament is, I’ll love her. I think I just need some company right now. Empty house and all.”

He’s feeling sheepish by the end of that statement, like he revealed too much about himself, especially to a fan. But the sternness in her expression melts, and she ushers him into the pen, closing the gate behind him. So it can’t be all bad.

“Alright then,” she says, “here. I’ll draw up the paperwork. Do you have a carrier to take her home in?”

Kent accepts the kitten from her grasp, already swooning a little inside at how adorable she is. But then he winces, realizing that, no, he doesn’t have any of the equipment necessary for taking care of cats anymore.

She sighs a little bit, obviously noticing his lack of preparedness.

“You can buy some stuff from us if you need to.”

“I’ll drop by Petco on the way home too, I promise.”

“Are you sure this isn’t an impulse adoption?”

Kent idly pets the kitten, pleased to note that it’s curling up in his grasp contentedly.

“It kind of is?” He says “but not in a bad way. I know I’ll be able to take care of her. I’m ready for her, I’ve just been making a lot of excuses for myself lately, and it really needs to stop.”

She doesn’t seem to entirely understand where he’s coming from, which is fair, he did word all that pretty vaguely, but she seems satisfied.

“Sorry,” he says, “that was probably a bit of an overshare.”

“No,” she says, “I get it. I’ll get you the paperwork. She seems like she likes you anyways.”

While she walks off, he fishes his phone out of his pocket, turning off do not disturb mode.

Itty Bitty: I’m sorry, that was presumptuous of me  
Itty Bitty: just ignore the first part of the present, I’m sure you’ll like the game  
Itty Bitty: Kent?

Shit, he probably should have replied. He snaps a photo of the kitten sleeping in his lap on Snapchat and captions it “sorry, I had to get her right away.”

Then he downloads it and sends it to Bitty over text.

Kit yawns and he scrambles to get a picture of that.

He captions this one “meet Kit :)”

Then he takes a third of his smiling face, making sure to include the cat in his lap. It just says “thank you.”

——

Kit has way more energy than he thought she would have when he first met her, but he gets used to her need to pounce on everything pretty quick. He falls head over heels for her, and sends Bitty about a gazillion cat pictures a day.

Itty Bitty: I regret sending you that link  
Itty Bitty: at least before your cat picture spam was varied  
Itty Bitty: now I just get a thousand pictures of the same cat sleeping  
Kent: but she sleeps so funny!  
Itty Bitty: …  
Itty Bitty: I suppose you’re right

Before too long hockey season will start back up again, and Kent realizes that he’s going to have to play the same ice as Jack. As opponents, not teammates.

It’s absolutely nerve wracking.

School starts back up for bitty in late August, and his replies become slightly more sporadic. Their schedules aligning less and less now that Bitty is dealing with academics and Kent has to practice more, regaining what he lost while he was abroad. Which isn’t much, since he always stayed at hotels with gyms.

By the time September rolls around and the scrimmages start up, they’re down to about two conversations a week, daily cat pictures and obligatory responses notwithstanding.

When the season actually starts back up again, and Kent realizes that he’ll be travelling to Providence soon to play on the same ice as Jack for the first time in over half a decade he thinks, fuck it. It’s time to take a risk.

Kent: I’m giving you an early Christmas present  
Kent: here

Then he sends the link and waits for Bitty’s response. It comes not long later, he’s pretty much memorized Bitty’s schedule so he knows the best time to get responses from him.

Itty Bitty: this certainly is early.  
Itty Bitty: and a lot  
Itty Bitty: goodness, not to be rude, but why did you send me an Uber gift card?  
Itty Bitty: I feel like there might be an explanation behind this.  
Kent: it’s for the drive to Providence  
Kent: you should be getting some tickets in the mail too  
Kent: though if Jack wants to give you tickets you can sell mine  
Kent: I just want you to come to a game of mine  
Kent: and Providence is pretty close

Kent hopes Bitty doesn’t fall his bluff. He knows Bitty’s smart enough to infer that Kent needs the moral support now more than ever. But he also kind of really doesn’t want to talk about it.

Itty Bitty: oh goodness Kent! Of course I’ll come!  
Itty Bitty: and you said tickets?  
Kent: I sent three  
Kent: if you want to bring two friends  
Itty Bitty: oh lord  
Itty Bitty: they’re good seats too aren’t they?  
Kent: the best  
Kent: of course they are :)  
Itty Bitty: you do know everyone in the Haus is going to be fighting over them?  
Kent: :))

That pretty much settles that. Bitty will probably be there, because he’s an awesome friend. There’s nothing to be worried about now. He knows Bitty is moral support he can rely on.

He knows all of this logically. But it still doesn’t help the jangle of nerves that follows him for days to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added Bitty/Kent to the tags because I think it's pretty clear Kent's catching feelings, sorry if you expected get together, that's gonna take... Quite a few more chapters. I tagged this fic as slowburn so I'm following through lol.


	12. Bitty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know a guy that speaks with a southern accent and when he says the words “yes ma’am” it,,, does things to me.
> 
> So when I was writing this chapter Bitty said “yes mama” at one point and I was like “hmm I don’t really like the way that sounds. What if he says “yes ma’am.”” But then I was like “no that’s his mom, that’s inappropriate.”
> 
> Then I remembered that ma’am is a perfectly normal honorific and people in the south call their mothers that all the time.
> 
> I’m just a pervert.
> 
> ....also sorry this update took three months.

On the morning of the fifth, his mother approaches with a cup of coffee, a kiss for his cheek, and a decent amount of opinions.

“G’mornin’ hun,” she says, then without further ado, “you should start learning the basics soon.”

He takes a long sip of his coffee, still half awake and squinting at her over the brim.

“What basics d’ya mean mama?”

She scoffs and makes a dismissive hand gesture. 

“The basics of magic,” she says, as if anything involving magic should be a given. “Now, as you know, in our family we typically wait until the twenty fifth birthday before we even reveal that magic exists. It has to do with emotional maturity. Finding balance and center is important before performing magic, so twenty five is a pretty good age for that.”

She takes a slurp of her own coffee, but she trails off in a way that indicates she isn’t done talking, so he waits for her to finish.

“But the cat’s out of the bag now, and you seem pretty ready, so I figure I might as well start teachin’ yah.”

She giggles excitedly.

“You know, I've been waiting for this since the day you were born. This is a huge milestone, the last one I really get to be a part of. It’s more than most mothers get.”

She grins like she’s just thought of something.

“Really,” she says, “this is a magical moment for me.”

She winks at him and he groans through a smile.

“You're so cheesy mama,” he laughs, “but I'm not quite sure I want to learn magic. I've been gettin’ by just fine without it.”

She does her assessment wave around him again, more of a gesture right now, he thinks, than an action with purpose. 

“But, Bitty, you've got some good power. You shouldn't let it go to waste. I'd have to do a small ritual to really get a sense of what you'd specialize in, but we could do trial and error too. Sides’,” she says, hands dropping, “you aren't learning anything big. Just the basics before you go home for the summer, maybe a few simple spells for the road.”

She sighs dreamily, a wistful look in her eyes.

“You know, those with power typically take to magic like a duck to water. When you really surround yourself in it, let yourself experience it, it's just the best feeling. Your father doesn't have the spark so he'll never understand, but if I had to explain it I'd say… It's like coming home. Just comforting, and when you cast good magic, strong magic? It's like being so sure of yourself. It'll really give you a confidence boost if you let it!”

She laughs, gesturing around the house.

“This whole house is laced through with my spellwork. It just makes our home feel more like home. I want to teach you how to feel that, but it takes some practice to attune to magic other than your own, even though it'll go faster on account of the fact that I'm your blood.”

“I guess if it's that important to you,” he concedes, “I wouldn't mind.”

“It is,” she admits, “but I won't be making you learn anything really beyond the basics, not like we have time for much anyways. And be sure to let that friend of yours know he's welcome to join the lesson if he wants, just as soon as he gets back from his run.”

“I don't think Jack knows about magic,” Bitty says, a bit shocked she would suggest as much.

“He hasn't told you?” She asks.

Then she seems to think beyond her initial reaction.

“Well, I suppose that's sensible,” she says, “I did just confront him last night.”

“You  _ accosted _ our guest?” Bitty asks, scandalized and surprised at the out of character actions on his mothers part. 

“Well I wouldn't put it so harshly!” She says, “I just noticed that he had an affinity, and that he had  _ used  _ it at some point. And, well,” she picks nervously at a loose thread on the old sweater she's wearing, “it's just that I know there's been some sort of magic activated on you, and I wanted to see if maybe he was the one who did it.”

“Jack has…” He trails off, dumbstruck.

“No! Well, yes,” she admits, “he has performed magic, but not on you, honey. We still don't know who did that.”

She’s really pulling the thread out now, though Bitty suspects she has some sort of spell to reverse that, seeing as that old sweater is still in one relative piece despite all her worrying over the years.

“Gosh,” she says, more than a bit flustered, “I’m really mucking this up, aren't I.” 

She sighs. 

“Look, honey, you should really talk to Jack about this. I have’ta run some errands anyways, your father’s out coachin’ his high school team right now, that should give y'all a few hours space to talk all this over.”

She grabs her purse off the counter and her keys off the hook, looping back around for a hug and a kiss on the cheek before heading towards the door.

“Bye, Dicky.”

Then she’s gone.

——

Not long after his mother escapes the awkward situation she’d created, Jack comes jogging in through the door, popping his earbud out of his ear to greet him.

“Hi,” he says, breath still coming in harsh pants, “good morning.”

It’s not an uncommon sight, Jack fresh from a run and dripping sweat, but it’s still something that makes his heart skip a beat every time.

Jack slicks his hand back through his hair, sweat wet and tousled and... it’s more than a little distracting.

“I just saw your mom leave out the driveway,” he says, slinging his thumb over his shoulder, “she chorin’?”

“Yeah,” Bitty responds, somewhat mesmerized as he watches a bead of sweat trickle down Jack’s cheek, “she's runnin’ errands right now.”

“Cool,” Jack says, “your dad at practice right now?”

“Yeah,” Bitty says, making eye contact now, “he's coachin’ his high schoolers.”

“Is he?” Jack says, leaning in incrementally closer.

“He is,” Bitty says, eyes flicking down to Jack’s mouth.

He sees the uptick of a smile at the corner and then closes his eyes as Jack leans in to kiss him, soft and sweet and a little bit sweat salty as well.

His hands come to settle on Jack’s waist, who in turn puts his hand on Bitty’s cheek. He leans into the warmth, savoring the feel of Jack’s tongue against his. Jack’s hands running over his shoulders, hell, even the somewhat damp shirt beneath his hands. 

But then he remembers that he has a distinct line of inquiry he should be following at the moment.

He pull away, putting his hand against Jack’s chest when he tries to chase his receding mouth.

“Wait,” he breathes.

“Wait?” Jack repeats, already backing up a little, seeming anxious.

“I have something I need to talk to you about, mister.” He says.

“Oh?” Jack responds.

“Yes,” Bitty reponds, gnawing his lip a little before continuing, “now, my momma tells me you know about magic.”

“Oh.” Jack says. 

“Well?” Bitty asks. “I just found out about magic at the beginning of the summer, and I’ve been told I wasn’t even supposed to find out until I was twenty five. So,” he says, “how did you find out about it?”

Jack is beginning to look somewhat persecuted. Bitty sighs.

“Why don’t we sit down?” He suggests, gesturing towards the kitchen table. “You want some coffee hon?”

“Yes, please.” Jack responds, lowering himself to the kitchen chair, seemingly a bit in shock.

Bitty bustles in to the kitchen and grabs a mug, pouring Jack coffee with just a splash of milk, like he likes it. 

“Now, go on,” he says, putting the mug down in front of Jack, “tell me how you got into magic.”

“Uh,” Jack says, looking a bit out of sorts in Bitty’s whirlwind presence. 

“I found a book.” He says.

“A magic book?”

“Yeah,” Jack Responds, “it was my mémé’s. Um…” 

Bitty nods in encouragement. 

“I haven’t really done a lot of spells. Just three, I think. Or, I did two and watched one.”

“Oh?” Bitty says, when he doesn’t elaborate.

“Yeah, it was in high school. I showed my friend the book, and we ended up doing a few spells together. But I tried one on my own and it didn’t work. So…” he shrugs. “Your mom told me I wasn’t that powerful anyways.”

“Oh,” Bitty says. “What were the spells?”

“Uh.” Jack says, scratching his head. “The one my friend did was…” he seemingly searches for words, and Bitty does his best to encourage it through expression alone. “A love spell? Love detection spell? It’s weird.” He concludes.

“Okay,” Bitty says, placid. “What about the other ones?”

“Um,” Jack says, fiddling with his coffee cup, “the one that worked helped my friends flowers grow. The one that didn’t was supposed to alleviate stress.” 

He shrugs, seeming to accept that as self explanatory. Which is fair enough, Jack is a very stress prone person.

“So, did your parents try to tell you when you turned twenty five?” Bitty asks.

“No,” Jack says. “I don't think they know.”

“What?” Bitty asks, “like they don’t know magic exists at all?”

“Yeah,” Jack responds.

“Well maybe your line waits until you’re thirty before the big reveal.” Bitty suggests.

Jack snorts, and Bitty gives an answering smile. 

“Well, whatever way you slice it you’re welcome to the magic lesson mama intends to give me,” He says. “You can learn the bare bone basics before you go home tomorrow.”

“Magic lessons?” Jack asks.

“Yeah,” Bitty responds, “she says she’s been lookin’ forward to teachin’ me for quite some time now, and that you’re welcome to join.” Bitty slides his hand across the table to rest over Jack’s, smiling at him. “I think you should, it’ll be fun.”

“Okay,” Jack says, expression soft and open.

“And in the meantime,” Bitty adds, checking the time, “I think we still have an hour or so before my parents get back, if you want to join me upstairs.”

He pushes himself out from his place at the table, heading up the stairs. He looks back to check on Jack after a beat, and he’s hastily sipping from his coffee before setting it back down on the table to follow him. Bitty laughs, and ascends, knowing Jack is right on his heels.

——

By the time his dad gets home, Jack is in the shower, washing off the sweat from both his workout and the one Bitty gave him. Bitty’s a bit sweaty himself, but he needs to wait for Jack to finish up in the shower before he can use it. He knows if they showered together they would have ended up getting distracted. Even if they hadn’t, his dad would have come home while they were still showering, which he suspects would have been somewhat disastrous. 

Even so, he’s still pouting a little as his dad makes his way into the living room to watch the news. 

He greets his dad and heads back upstairs to scroll mindlessly through Twitter and wait for his turn to shower. 

When his mother gets home, about half an hour later, both Jack and Bitty have wiped away the post coital grime and are ready for instruction.

She laugh at the way they’re both perk up at her entrance.

“I take it Jack will be joining us?” She asks.

“Yes ma’am,” Bitty says, and Jack nods.

“Alright then,” she says, “let me just put my shopping bag in my room and we’ll get started.

 

“We’ll be here,” Bitty replies.

She ruffles his hair in passing and he sticks his tongue out at her. Jack smiles at him.

“You excited?” He asks.

“I’m gettin’ to be,” Bitty responds. “Mama keeps talkin’ it up. And sides’,” he leans in, lowering his voice, “everything just seems that much better when it’s with you.”

Jack’s face lights up red as a stop sign, and Bitty trails his thumb over his hand, smiling idly at him. It amazes him sometimes how Jack can be so easily embarrassed. But hell if he doesn’t love that shade of cherry red his cheeks get when Bitty pushes the right buttons.

He hears some commotion as his mama makes her way down the stairs and snatches his hand back just a little too quickly to be natural.

Jack understands though, and he’s even more understanding after the whole incident at the fair. He’s always been of the opinion that Bitty can take all the time he needs. Though at this point Bitty personally just wishes he could just buck up and do it already.

“Alright y’all,” she says, bustling into the kitchen, “when I say basics I mean basics. We’re mostly just gonna work on meditation techniques for now, to help you control your magic and get a better feel for it. This is especially useful for people who don’t have the strongest spark.” She gestures towards Jack, who nods in concession.

She pulls out her phone, scrolling through.

“Now either I can queue up some peaceful relaxation music and we can get to meditatin’,” she says, “or I can perform that teensy little assessment spell I was telling you about, to asses the kinds of magic you’d be good at.”

She gives them both a hopeful look, and Bitty shakes his head at her antics. 

“Are you really that curious?”

“Well, Yeah,” she says, “it’s my area of expertise, knowing’ things. Assessment magic or what have you. It really just boils down to curiosity, an intense desire to discover. It’s what drives my magic and it’s a part of me.”

Bitty catches Jack shifting slightly out of the corner of his eye and turns to look at him. He seems like he wants to say something. 

“You have a question?” He asks him, trying to be as encouraging as possible in the face of his evident discomfort. To be fair, he and his mother are both whirlwind-esque and it can be tiring for some people and overwhelming for others.

Jack nods in agreement before speaking.

“What kinds of magic are there?”

They both look at his mom, who pauses in consideration.

“Well, there’s not really a science behind it.” She admits. “No one’s really created official categories or anything like that that we know of. But we come from a long line of magic practitioners who specialize in assessment, more interested in the pursuit of knowledge than anything. So I believe one of our ancestors figured out that there are specialties and made a spell to discern which ones you’re in possession of. As far as I know specialties are typically hereditary, so yours and mine will likely align.”

She grins, clearly excited, and thunks a large, age worn book down on the table.

“So,” she says, flipping through the book, “the Bittle line typically specializes in assessment, but we also tend to have strong ties in creation magic. It’s why my side of the family has such a strong affinity for homesteading. It comes very much naturally to us. That certainly includes you,” she says, winking at Bitty.

“My pies are magic?” He asks, frankly confused.

“Well they don't have magical properties, but your magic helps you make them. I’m sure you've noticed by now that they seem to pop out, perfectly done, way more quickly than they reasonably should around you.”

“My whole life is a lie,” Bitty says, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. Jack snorts to his right.

“Oh hush,” Bitty says, “this is shocking to me.”

“So,” Jack says, “you said it’s the Bittle line that specializes in assessment magic, but your husband isn’t magic? Does that mean he uses your last name?” He gestures a thumb to where Bitty is sitting at the table.

“Very astute!” She says, clapping her hands together. “Yes, my husband and my son both took my maiden name. My goodness, it caused quite the stir on our little gossip track. But as far as I know Wiccan bloodlines are traditionally matriarchal, and I couldn’t really imagine much else.

“Y’know,” she says snapping her fingers, “tends to be magic is much stronger in the women in a line. Sometimes men born of witches don’t get any magic at all. That might just explain why your mémé never told no one about the magic. Could be your father just didn’t have the spark.”

“Hmm.” Jack says. “Yeah, that might be it.”

He sighs deeply, running his hand through his hair.

“I just wish I could ask her you know? I have so many questions. Like, why didn't she tell me? I have at least a little spark. And even if my dad wasn't magic, wouldn't it have made sense to tell him something so important about her life? Like if she was powerful enough that I could sense her magic right away like that, shouldn't magic have meant more to her?”

Bitty reaches over and pats him comfortingly on the back. His momma’s prying eyes be damned, Jack is  _ upset.  _ He's not just gonna sit there awkwardly. 

“I wish I could help you,” she says, “but I don't have any magic in the spiritual domain, and I don't know anyone who does. So even if I knew any summoning spells to call her up for a chat I doubt they’d work. Best I can do is speculate.”

Jack seems a little dumbstruck, as does Bitty.

“What, like a seance?” Bitty asks, “those actually exist?”

“Well yeah, ‘s far as I know that's not the only method, and i’m gonna be honest, most of the people who perform them don't actually have spiritual magic, so, if you'll pardon my French, they're just bullshitting. But yeah, I’m sure a few of the ladies out there performing seances are doin’ it for real.

“You know what,” she says, “why don't I just do the assessment ritual first, and then I’ll explain the domains y'all have before givin’ a summary of those you don’t.”

“Okay,” Bitty says easily, curiously watching as the book thuds open onto a page labelled  _ Increases Confidence. _

He impulsively stops his mother’s hand before she can flip to the next page. His eyes dart over to look at Jack, who is now curiously craning his neck to read the page himself.

“Ah.” his mother says. “That would be a good one to help with anxiety… if it were real that is.”

“What?” Bitty asks.

“Well,” she says, “it’s a decoy spell.”

Bitty just blinks at her in confusion.

She blinks back before seemingly remembering the importance of context.

“I’m not sure why they came about, because it’s not like there’s really that many competing lines, but ‘s far as I know everyone’s spell books have decoy spells.”

She purses her lips slightly, searching the air above her for words to explain.

“They’re typically spells that work in unexpected ways. It’s to discourage theft. If someone willingly loans out their spell book they can warn the borrower which spells not to attempt to cast, but if it’s stolen, they could end up casting one of the decoy spells, which typically have.. adverse effects.”

She gestures to the book.

“Take this one for example. If you had tried to go behind my back and cast the spell, it would have made you overconfident, to the point of lowering your rationality and impeding your reasonable inhibitions. Usually decoy spells are the most enticing spells in the book, so they’re more likely to catch the eye of the thief. Sometimes they’re just mediocre though, and there’s no limit to how many decoys someone may put in their spell book; so there’s really no way of knowing which spell is going to be a decoy and which isn’t unless you ask.”

Bitty glances over at Jack to see what he thinks of all this, expecting an expression of fascination to mirror his own. But he just seems pale, eyes wide and near gleaming, this side of horrified.

Bitty subtly places his hand on Jack’s knee under the table, shooting him a concerned, questioning look when Jack snaps out of it at the contact. 

He just shakes his head and turns to face Bitty’s mother again in response. After a beat of confused scrutiny Bitty does the same.

It seems she hasn’t noticed anything is wrong, because she’s still contentedly talking about decoy spells.

“But sometimes if you just read the latin you can tell if a spell may not fit it’s description as well as you think. Hell, some of the decoy spells are so outrageously different from their descriptions that they usually only work to fend off uneducated witches, or stupid ones that don’t even go through the trouble of attempting to verify that a spell is a decoy.”

She laughs to herself, and Bitty feels the fabric of the jean shift under his hand. Jack has clenched it into his fist, knuckles near white with the strain. Bitty attempts to catch his gaze again, but he’s staring resolutely ahead. Bitty uneasily mirrors him, concern mounting.

“If you ask me, those are just sloppy. Seems like somethin’ so easily bypassable defeats the point.”

She huffs a little breath.

“Though I suppose even those with a hex affinity need some ways to be creative. I’m surprised we even have any decoy spells, given the lack of hex happy witches in our line.”

She smiles at Bitty, leaning over to pinch his cheek.

“I’m sure you don’t have one, you’re just too sweet.”

“Mama!” Bitty protests, hand sliding off Jack’s knee as he fends off his mother’s affection.

“Alright, alright,” she concedes, hands raised in surrender. “Enough of that.”

She flips through the book for a moment before seemingly settling upon what she was looking for.

“Ya’ll ready?”

Jack nods a silent assent, and Bitty follows suit a beat later, still scrutinizing him a little.

She grabs a bundle of some plants off the table and procures a lighter from her pocket, easily setting the bundle aflame. As smoke begins to rise, she recites the spell, words flowing off her tongue like they belong there.

She stands, adjusting the book slightly so she can keep an eye on it as she circles them, letting the smoke curl around and between them. 

Bitty surreptitiously stifles the urge to cough. 

The smoke soon begins to glow faintly, changing colors as it hovers around him much longer than smoke naturally should. All around him, the smoke turns a pastel yellow, swirled with baby blue and violet. A confusing mix, but after a moment they begin to separate a bit more and become their own distinct colors. 

The smoke on Jack’s side is significantly sparser, and mostly that pastel yellow color, with just a streak of brown. Though bitty could almost swear he saw some deep green in there…

His mother blows the fire out, placing the singed plants on the table. Without speaking, she plunges her hand into Jack’s smoke, pulling what amounts to less than a handful of green smoke out, humming curiously.

It’s a darker color than the other ones, and as she lets it go it seems to want to wiggle back in to the yellow smoke. Though the yellow doesn’t seem particularly keen on that idea.

His mother snorts a bit in amusement. 

“Figures that one would be tricky. Seems you have just the tiniest bit of a hex affinity Jack.” She turns to face him. “Though it probably doesn’t matter much, given your magic ain’t that strong in the first place.”

“What do you mean by a hex affinity?” Jack asks, not missing a beat, his gaze sharp and steely.

“Oh that’s right, I didn’t really explain.” She says. “Well, basically it’s an affinity for mischief. Anything with an intent to harm or stir things up falls under the hex category. So if you have a hex affinity, you could make decoy spells, or use it for self defense. 

“But,” she says, “it can and has easily spelled disaster in the wrong hands.”

Her words hang heavy in the air for a moment, Bitty unsure of how to show support and Jack seemingly processing it all.

“Though,” his mother says, cutting through the mood easy as butter, “I doubt you could do anything significant with such a small affinity. If I had to guess I’d say it’s a holdover, an inheritance from your grandma.”

Jack thinks it over a bit.

“Well… she did really like practical jokes.”

She nods sagely. 

“So, what’s the yellow smoke?” Bitty asks, curious and very much ready to move on.

“That would be assessment. I knew you would have a real knack for that.” she reaches over to pinch Bitty’s cheeks again, though he dodges out of the way before she can.

“It seems Jack does too though, obviously.” she rests a hand on his shoulder from where she’s standing over him, smiling down kindly. “Seems you’re practically one of the family now, given the Bittle specialty is yours as well.”

She winks then, and Bitty’s heart clenches. He wants so badly to tell his mother how much that means to him. Wants to scream “that’s my boyfriend you approve of! I love him so much and I want you to too!”

But he doesn’t, he just sits silently, listening to his mother.

“The blue is creation, which I suspected, though that does seem to be your primary one, not assessment.” She tsks jokingly. “Luckily Jack was here with a primary assessment skill, softens the blow a little bit.”

She grins at Bitty, and he smiles softly, broken out of his thoughts.

“What’s the lavender?” He asks.

“That’s the interpersonal skill. Not surprising considering what a charmer you are darlin’.”

His mother winks, and with her hand still resting on the back of Jack’s chair he  _ almost  _ takes it as an insinuation, a nod towards the fact that he’s charmed Jack enough to date him. He tenses for a split second, but he really doesnt think that’s what she’s implying, so he pushes through the tension to give her a questioning look.

“That one is relatively self explanatory. Pretty much any spell that has to do with people falls under the interpersonal skill set. Typically even just having an affinity for interpersonal spellwork can boost your natural charisma. Nothing too drastic,” she assures, “it just tends to make people trust you faster.”

She goes to sit back down across from them, closing the book on her way.  

“The brown,” she says, turning to Jack, “ is a  nature affinity. Though given your power levels and the fact that it isn’t your main affinity by any means, the best it can give you is probably a bit of a green thumb.”

“Now lets see,” she says, looking up at the ceiling, “ what am I missing...

“Well,” she says not much longer, thoughts apparently gathered, “there’s the spiritual domain, we kind of glanced over it earlier. People with affinities for this domain are, as far as I can tell, pretty rare. Mostly it’s just about communicating with the dead, but some powerful witches in this aspect have been able to reanimate the dead.”

Bitty gapes.

“Oh it’s nothing to worry about really, I certainly haven't heard of anyone still alive who has this domain, let alone someone powerful enough to reanimate the dead.”

She waves her hand dismissively, moving on.

“The last one is healing. Also pretty self explanatory, though it’s a sought after affinity, if it’s strong enough a witch could even use it to lengthen a natural life span. Though this is another one i’ve never met in person. It’s somewhat rare.”

She stretches her arms over her head for a second, then grabs the plant bundle and walks it over to the trash can.

“That sums it up for the day boys, tomorrow we meditate.”

She shoos them out of the kitchen and up the stairs, already bustling around and grabbing things out of the cabinets. Bitty doesn’t doubt there will be some sort of baking wafting it’s scent up the stairs in an hour or two.

His head is practically reeling with all the information his mother just dumped on him, and Jack seems equally dazed as he makes his way up the stairs. But he seems tired as well, more so than any of them, and Bitty still hasn’t forgotten the weird reactions he had earlier, when his mom was talking about decoy spells.

So when Jack trudges his way into the guest room, he follows.

“So... what was that all about earlier?” Bitty asks the back of Jack’s head, gently closing the guest room door behind him.

Jack’s shoulders tense.

“What was what about?” 

He doesn’t turn as he says it.

“Earlier, when momma was talkin’ about decoy spells, you got all tense… kinda like you are now.”

Jack’s shoulders have tightened, inching their way up near his ears.

“I don’t know what youre talking about.”

Bitty gapes a little at the blatant sidestep.

“Don’t you play dumb with me mister Zimmerman.” 

Jack huffs, turning to face him.

“It was nothing.”

“We both know damn well it wasn’t.” Bitty says, kind of astonished that Jack would even try to play it off as nothing, not after what Bitty saw written plain as day across his face.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack says. “It has nothing to do with me. It  _ really  _ doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“It sure seemed personal.” Bitty scoffs, crossing his arms.

“It wasn’t.”

“Jack, just what in the hell are you trying to avoid here? I just want to know what’s got you so worked up.”

“I’m not worked up.” Jack says, flatly, feigning calm.

“Don’t insult me by acting like you don’t know just how well I know you,” Bitty says, “I can read you like a book.”

“Well put a bookmark in it,” Jack says, suddenly emotive, pushing himself up off the desk to loom over Bitty, his voice terse and clipped, “because this chapter is none of your business.”

Bitty blinks in shock at the sudden change in attitude, from numb to angry in an instant. He nearly opens his mouth to pry again, but he bites back the inquiries. He already let some major gaps in communication slide this morning, and he hadn't really cared about it in the moment, but he’s kind of over Jack’s crap right now.

His momma put it best, he’s curious, information driven, and hell, alright, he’s a little nosy. But getting Jack to talk is like pulling fucking teeth sometimes and he thinks he’s had quite enough for the night.

“Y’know what?” he spits out. “Fine. Keep your damn secrets.”

He huffs out of the room, door slamming behind him with a little more force than he was trying to use. The sound soothes the part of him currently chomping at the bit for a brawl just a little bit though, and when he tumbles into bed he’s only  _ slightly  _ tempted to scream into his pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I just want to let y’all know that we’re at around the halfway mark so far! Probably a little past it actually. Woo hoo! I have finals coming up, so the next chapter might take a bit, but I doubt it will be longer than a month. I’m so excited! We’re drawing very near to some really big plot points, so I hope you guys will like them ;)

**Author's Note:**

> find me at 
> 
> antiarcticmonkeys.tumblr.com
> 
> or my much less used fic blog:
> 
> regina-writes.tumblr.com


End file.
